


we've got nothing better to do

by inmylife



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Band Fic, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Lemonade Mouth (2011), Multi, how has this not been done yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/inmylife
Summary: all the best high school stories start with a detention.(or, the lemonade mouth au no one asked for)
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Kristen Applebees & Figueroth Faeth, Kristen Applebees/Tracker O'Shaughnessey, The Bad Kids & The Bad Kids (Dimension 20), Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 74
Kudos: 107





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is a lyric sort of stolen from [turn up the music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dACNhrdm44c) from the lemonade mouth movie (it was originally a longer lyric and then i thought it sounded weird so i changed it as of 1/1/21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you’re never gonna fit in much, kid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary lyric from [teenagers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6EQAOmJrbw) by my chemical romance 
> 
> this is set in a universe where yes there are orcs and elves and everything but there are only questionably spells? magic is brought up maybe never? 
> 
> also i can't bring myself to call football "bloodrush" ever since i found out that brennan took the name for it from that summer camp he talks about (it's just too funny to me idk) so it's just football because i need to keep a straight face while i'm writing lmao.

**Fabian**

His dad is a big, hulking guy, the kind of guy who looks like he had lived out his glory days on a high school football team, or maybe a college one. With some people, you can just tell. 

“Now, remember, my boy.” Fabian turns in the passenger seat to look his dad in the eye. “You’ve gotta prove your dominance. Prove you’re not someone to be messed with, alright? You go into school, you find the biggest, baddest kid, and you sock him in the stomach.” 

Fabian isn’t too sure about that. But he nods, he says yes, and he turns to look out the window as the parking lot of Aguefort High School comes into view. 

He’s sure he has high school down to a science. He’s going to get on the football team, make friends with the upperclassmen, and command Coach Daybreak’s respect, and he’ll be promoted to captain by the time he’s a junior or even a sophomore. He’ll be popular. He’s the son of Bill Seacaster, after all. His family’s got a lot of money, and Fabian knows how to play the popularity game. He has a way of speaking that’s proud and confident, and a way of dressing that’s on the subtler side of well-off. 

At least, that’s the way it had worked in middle school. 

He’s got this. He’s Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of Bill Seacaster, and he was popular, he’d been popular, he knows how to play this game. He has a plan. 

Fabian takes a deep breath, swings his bag over one shoulder, and saunters up to the front steps. 

He isn’t so sure about hitting someone. He’s pretty sure that might get him in trouble, and, like… he’s not his dad. Not really. He wants to be the best, of course he does, but he wonders if maybe hitting people is where he draws the line. 

The car, a frankly kind of embarrassing vintage piece with more add-ons than most people think would even fit on a car, remains idling in the parking lot as Fabian walks in. 

Fabian looks around. No teachers in sight. A few girls, probably upperclassmen, chatting under a tree. And a tall guy, nearly swallowed by his black hoodie, headphones on, clearly muscular under all that fabric, staring at the doors like he’s steeling himself to go in. 

He takes a look back at the car. Still there. His dad’s silhouette in the window. 

Well. Fabian is a lot of things, but he is not a disappointment to his father. He can’t be.

* * *

**Fig**

The change was supposed to be good for their family. Her mom is the head ranger at the national park, it was a promotion she’d been waiting on for ages, she could afford the house on her own now and Gilear could just have some space.

Yeah, fuck that shit. 

Before this past summer, Fig had been popular. She’d gone by her full name, Figueroth, she’d dressed all pretty just like the other girls, she’d cared about things like the right filter to use in her profile pictures and whether or not she had the cutest new shoes. That had all changed when she’d found the pictures. 

Her mom, the same year Fig was born, had taken a bunch of polaroids with someone who wasn’t Gilear, the man Fig had  _ thought _ was her father. At first, Fig had thought maybe the big tattooed guy in the pictures was just a friend, but the way her mom had reacted to seeing the pictures told her otherwise. 

The horns had burst through the next week. 

She wasn’t a Faeth anymore. Faeth was  _ Gilear _ ’s last name, and Gilear had no relation to her. She was  _ just _ Fig now. 

“Fig, you’re gonna miss the bus-!” Her door slams open and her mother walks in. She’s dressed for work, her hair still wet from the shower, and she’s glaring. Fine. Let her glare. Fig doesn’t care what she thinks. 

Fig sighs and plucks at another string on her bass. Going into the new school year, she’d decided she wasn’t going to be anything like Figueroth Faeth. Just-Fig had a pack of of cigarettes on her dresser, and a bass guitar and an amp that she played whenever she liked. She played punk music from her radio speakers at night and covered her windows with band posters. And she didn’t go to school. 

“Not going,” Fig tells her mom, not even making eye contact - just striking the A string again. 

“No. Fig, I know you’re upset about… about everything...” In front of the house, Fig hears something bus-sounding pass by. “Shit,” her mother curses. “I don’t have time to drive you. And - where did you get these?” She snatches the pack of cigarettes off Fig’s dresser, and Fig makes a face. 

Her mom slams her door shut, and Fig can hear her in the hallway talking in hushed tones to… well, probably Gilear. She only catches a few words, and most of those are her own name, but she can read between the lines. 

The door opens again. “I have to go to work. I’ve called -”

“Just tell me who my  _ real _ dad is, and I’ll call this war off!” 

“Your  _ real dad _ ,” sighs her mom, “is Gilear, who  _ raised you _ , and who’s coming over to drive you to school. He’ll be here in five minutes. Just… try and behave yourself at school, okay? Act out all you want with me, but-”

Fig gets up and shuts the door in her face. 

In another world, Fig would be able to get out of this. She could hide from Gilear and the apartment building he’d moved into when her parents had their first fight after the truth came out. She could hide from this stupid school that she didn’t want to go to, because school wasn’t important. She could sneak out of this house with her bass and be a star, all on her own. A headliner. 

But this wasn’t that world, so Fig is left to glare at her platform boots for five minutes until she hears Gilear’s falling-apart car creak and wheeze up to the front of the house. She storms down the stairs, down the hallway, slams the front door behind her, tosses her backpack on the floor of Gilear’s car with more force than necessary, and slams the car door too. 

Gilear had taken the news hard, that Fig wasn’t his daughter. He hadn’t been able to find a new job yet, really, and after he and Fig’s mother had decided they wouldn’t be able to make it work, he’d moved out to some crappy apartment building, paying for it, so far, with just the savings left over from his last job. 

He had a yogurt stain on his shirt, and it didn’t look like he’d washed his hair in a while. Fig didn’t care. 

“Fig,” he starts cautiously. “Hi.”

“Hello, Gilear.”

“I’d rather you not call me-”

“Then what am I supposed to call you?” Fig’s voice is icy. “‘Stranger’?” 

Gilear sighs. “Fine.” 

Fig glares at the windshield the whole way, plotting. She’s going to get herself in so much trouble today, she’s already decided. Maybe she’ll even get kicked out, and then she won’t have to do high school, and she can focus on the bass. 

Gilear tries to tell her to have a good day, but she closes the door hard before he can finish. 

There’s a fight happening on the front steps. Fig bypasses it entirely. There are a number of teachers already there, trying to break up whatever’s happening in the center of students chanting “fight!”. 

A golden opportunity. 

The sign saying “teachers’ lounge” is just inside the front doors. The door to the teachers’ lounge is open. Fig slips inside and heads straight for the minifridge, sitting on the counter in the darkened room. 

What she hadn’t counted on was automatic lighting that switched on when she was halfway to the fridge. She freezes for a moment, but keeps going - isn’t the whole point of this to get into trouble? - and is halfway into examining the label on some Dwarven alcohol when she hears someone clearing their throat behind her. 

“Who are you.” 

She turns, with the flask still in her hand. “Fig.” 

The man behind her is a tall dragonborn with bright red skin. “Detention.”

Even as she reaches out to take the red slip, she asks, “oh, is that your name?” 

He huffs. “My  _ name _ is Goldenhoard, and I am the vice principal and primary disciplinarian at Aguefort.”

Fig smirks. Then she winks at him. 

“Detention,” he reiterates, “today, after school. It’s going in your student file.” 

“That’s fine!” Fig singsongs, and near-skips out the door, red slip held high, something to be proud of. 

* * *

**Kristen**

Maybe it wasn’t cool to skip a class on the first day of school, but the art elective felt pointless to her. She didn’t like drawing, she wasn’t any good at it, and she was only stuck in the class because she was a freshman and freshmen were last to register and so the electives she’d  _ wanted _ to take had been filled up. 

So here she sits in the book supply closet instead, surrounded by tall metal shelves and tattered, fading books, on the second floor next to the gym. Here Kristen sits, on the floor in this windowless room, knees pulled up to her chest, back against the wall. 

She’d fiddled around on her crystal for ten minutes or so, but her parents still had an app restriction on her phone even though Kristen was fourteen now, she knew how to handle herself, she didn’t need it. Her options were the PrayerChain instant messenger, her notes app, and the music player with ads every three songs and even then those songs were worship music. She’d played around in her notes for a little while, typing out little snippets of words about forbidden things and other girls and being chosen and searching for absolution, just for fun, just to see how they looked in lapslock with strategic line breaks. But that got old quick. 

The books nearest Kristen, in this dimly lit room with its brown tile floor and stained ceiling, were books about world religions. Kristen knew, in the abstract, that she’d be taking a world religions course sophomore year, part of her graduation requirement. She also knew that her parents would probably try and exempt her. 

She’d done a lot of thinking over the summer. Yeah, being one of Helio’s chosen was great and all. But she didn’t like how her parents’ faith excluded the fae girl who’d invited Kristen over to her house in the third grade, or the orcish teacher she’d had for pre-algebra last year. She didn’t like the implication that, as much as her parents and Helio loved her, they’d stop loving her if they learned about some of the thoughts Kristen’s been having. Thoughts she isn’t sure she can name yet. 

Kristen reaches over, and opens the book. 

It doesn’t take long for her to get sucked in. The quiet of the room soothes her, the only sounds her own breathing and the turning of pages and the occasional muffled scrap of conversation slipping in from outside the door. It’s fascinating, all the ways people worship. All the things they call holy. Their songs, their traditions, their sacred places. Kristen takes it all in. 

She forces herself to keep reading, once she comes to the section about Helio and Sol. 

The crusades. The other wars. The governments. The propaganda. The exclusion. She persists her way through it all. Pastor Amelia had always preached that Sol is love, that Helio is kindness, but this book doesn’t match up with that at all. 

Kristen has to close the book. She needs to process. Her head is spinning. She leans it back against the wall and closes her eyes. 

The book falls out of her hands and  _ thunk _ s onto the floor.

When the door opens a moment later, and her homeroom teacher hands her a little red slip for detention, she’s not surprised. Detention is just another hour and a half she doesn’t need to spend at home, hiding her crisis of faith from her parents. 

* * *

**Riz**

Lunchtime requires just as much calculation, if not more, as the rest of high school. Lunch is where the social bonds - not where they’re  _ formed _ , really, but where they settle. One’s lunch table is who they are for the year. The choir kids clustering around the long, high table near the windows; the jocks, closest to where the hot lunch line begins; a trio of sophomore girls sitting in a windowsill. 

Riz surveys the caf. It’s a long room, tile already gross to look at - so he keeps his eyes up. He analyzes, he categorizes, he  _ investigates _ . It’s what he does best. He’s done with being the “briefcase kid”. He’s leaving that nickname in middle school. He’s going to be popular in high school even if it kills him. 

He can’t try and get in with the juniors and seniors. They’re too set in their ways, the cool ones are. Other freshmen won’t work either - popularity isn’t just confined to one grade, and besides, everyone else in his year is sure to remember him as the briefcase kid. So it has to be the sophomores.

Now that he’s narrowed down a class year, he needs to focus on the cliques, Riz thinks as he paces through the maze of tables, paper bag lunch clenched in one fist. Not the AV kids, they aren’t cool enough. Not the theatre kids, too insular. Not the jocks, he’d be seen through immediately. 

His eyes lock on a table of sophomores, mostly girls but a couple guys sprinkled in, conversing easily, with a couple seats open, but even as he walks over he’s sidelined. A piece of pastel paper is shoved into Riz’s face. 

He looks up to see a pretty elven or half-elf girl, probably a senior, with a public-facing smile. “Hi, I’m Penelope Everpetal, and we’re having a vote this week to bring back prom king and queen this year.” 

Riz squishes the thought of  _ isn’t prom in the spring? Why are they doing this now? _ in favor of paying attention to the clearly popular upperclassman girl in front of him. “Uh, yeah. Thanks. I’m, I’m Riz. Riz Gukgak. Freshman.” 

She just keeps smiling. He’s made the situation awkward somehow, but he can’t tell how yet. 

“Who’s this?” 

A blond guy comes up and puts his arm around Penelope. 

“Some freshman,” Penelope answers quietly.

“Riz Gukgak,” Riz supplies. 

“D’you play football, freshman?” asks the blond guy. 

Riz double-takes. Does he  _ look _ like the kind of guy who plays football? Nevertheless, he doesn’t exactly say no, instead stuttering out a “I - well -” before a third person, a tall, wide-shouldered orc guy in a letterman jacket, saunters up, grinning. 

“‘Course he does, Dayne.” Dayne. That’s the blond guy, then. “He’s the ball!”

Wait, what?

Penelope laughs. “The ball! Oh, that’s funny, Ragh.” But it isn’t until Dayne laughs that Ragh, the orc guy, seems to relax. 

“Let’s practice!” proclaims Dayne. He and Ragh rush at Riz. 

This is not how he’d expected his first day of freshman year to start. Not even in the worst-case scenario. Riz tries to dodge, but the two football players grab him  _ easily _ , shoving him into a trash can. 

He fumes as he clambers out, or at least tries to - in the process, he knocks the entire thing over. The dragonborn who Riz has deduced is the vice principal is, somehow, in the vicinity, and gives Riz a detention. 

It’s hard to argue his case with candy wrappers still in his hair and stuck to his clothes, but Riz at least tries. 

His luck is really not holding. Not like there was any luck to hold, anyway. 

* * *

**Adaine**

She stews, sitting outside the vice principal’s office. Her stupid sister!

Aelwyn had told her that it would make her seem cool to steal a book out of the restricted section. That people would  _ like _ her for it. What did Aelwyn know, anyway. It wasn’t Aelwyn who had to go here. No, it was Adaine, who’d failed the entrance exam for Hudol because of a panic attack mid-test.

Deep down - well, not that deep, actually - she wants to be Aelwyn. To be good enough to impress her parents. Good enough for Hudol. Aelwyn is a lot of things, and one of those things is cool, at least in the snobby upper-class circles Adaine’s family has run with all her life. 

She was an idiot for thinking Aelwyn was actually trying to give her good advice. All it’s gotten her is detention. 

The door to the vice principal’s office opens. Adaine thinks about something she’d read once about getting called down to the office and then being made to wait - a tactic to throw her off her guard, maybe. The disciplinarian is a tall, imposing man in a suit, and a ruddy, square face. The name on his door is  _ Goldenhoard _ . 

“Miss Abernant,” he says, not leaving the doorway. “Do come in.”

Adaine feels halfway into a panic attack already - not quite in her body, as she stands from the sticky plastic chair and walks into the smaller room. She’s numb inside as she sits down in another, near-identical chair (but blue this time instead of toothpaste green), across from Goldenhoard’s desk. 

“Theft on the first day,” he says sternly. “Not what we like here at Aguefort.”

“Please don’t call my parents.”

It’s that easy for Adaine to fall back into herself. Whatever numbing fear she feels over getting in trouble is turned to intense pressure at the thought of what her parents - and, worse, Aelwyn - will say if they find out. She’s in survival mode, now. 

“I promise I won’t do it again, it was stupid and I know that, I swear -”

Adaine feels the tendons in her hands clench up, notices almost methodically how her breath quickens. Only for a few moments, then she’s able to force her breathing into a steady rhythm. That was close. 

“I don’t make a habit of calling parents on the first offense,” says Goldenhoard. Adaine could melt with relief. “But,” he continues, “I do have to give you a detention.”

“That’s fine,” Adaine rushes out. “As long as my parents - I mean, I get myself home, so -” 

“I have to set an example,” he explains. “I’m sure you understand.”

“I do,” Adaine hurriedly affirms. “I do.” Her eyes fix on the wall clock above his desk. Watching the second hand tick grounds her, just a little, as Goldenhoard writes her up. 

* * *

**Gorgug**

He shouldn’t have hit back. 

His mom and dad always tell him to be kind to everyone, but Gorgug’s sick of being pushed around, he grew a whole foot over the summer, he’s tall and he’s imposing and he’s  _ angry _ , and when that pretentious-looking guy in the letterman jacket had walked straight up to him and just punched him in the stomach for some reason - Gorgug doesn’t even  _ know _ the guy - he had just gotten fed up. It’s like the world had disappeared, for a moment, and when it came back again he was by himself, stomach clenched, a bruise forming under his hoodie, and a red detention slip in his hand. 

His parents won’t mind so much that he got detention. At least he knows that. He can always rely on them caring about him. And so sue him, people have been calling him a freak and a creep since middle school, he’s allowed to get angry  _ one time _ . 

But he still feels bad. 

Gorgug turns up the music louder in his headphones as he walks into the basement room where detention is. The music room, if he’s clocking it right, if the posters on the walls are anything to go by. It has a really low ceiling, made even lower in places by pipes sticking out and running parallel, and he nearly hits his head more than once on his way to a desk in the back seat. 

He’s intimidated by some of the kids in here. The guy who’d hit him this morning is here, and he looks  _ popular _ in his letterman jacket. (Which, what? He knows football practice is  _ now _ .) Then there’s the tiefling girl with the  _ question authority _ tee shirt and the four-inch platform boots, who looks oddly happy to be here. Gorgug knows he looks pretty intimidating too, so he doesn’t envy the other three kids in this room - a skinny elven girl who looks visibly terrified, a redheaded human in one of the loudest tie-dye shirts Gorgug has ever seen, and a tiny green-skinned guy wearing a short-sleeve button-down. They probably feel even  _ more _ surrounded. 

The detention supervisor - the guidance counselor, Jawbone - gives them all an apologetic look and says… something. Gorgug watches as the redhead hands over a book, as everyone else’s crystals go onto the desk at the front of the room, but it doesn’t hit him until Jawbone is stood in front of him, gently tapping the front of the desk, that he realizes he needs to give up his headphones. 

It feels like he’s taken off a part of his body, somehow. The sounds of a quiet room stress him out. Oh well. At least he still has his sweatshirt, which is soft and  _ still _ too big for him, even after his massive growth spurt this summer. He pulls his hoodie up and mentally prepares himself for the next hour or so of ambient noise. 

He zones out. It’s almost too easy, letting his eyes unfocus. He imagines he’s listening to his most recent playlist, moving his head to the rhythm as subtly as he can. 

Being stared at has a  _ feeling _ . Like the eyes are marking little lasers into his skin, his entire surface prickling up. Gorgug knows this feeling well. Being the half-orc son of two gnomes will do that. 

Two things register at once. One, Jawbone had left the room. Two, all five of the other kids in the room were turned around in their desks, staring at him. It hits him too late that he must have been tapping out a drum rhythm with his fingers on the desk. He does that sometimes; it gets him in trouble, most places. “Sorry,” Gorgug mumbles. 

“It’s fine,” says the tiefling girl. “Sounded pretty good.” 

He feels his face heat up and looks back down at the desk again. Looking at people - and other people looking at him - is hard. Looking at the desk with its penciled drawings is easier. 

But it isn’t long until he looks up again. 

The tiefling girl had gotten her hands on a rubber band. Stretched between the fingers of one hand, the other plucking strategically, she’s figuring out a bass line. Simple. Gorgug doesn’t know too much about music but he knows this pattern, it’s a common one out of the radio-friendly pop songs that were popular when he was in elementary school.

She keeps looping those four notes on the rubber band. And Gorgug keeps looking at her, partly because the noise of the rubber band is a welcome reprieve from the stifling ambient silence-noise of before, but also partly because he feels like she expects him to join in. 

What the hell, Jawbone’s not here and his hands are itching to move - flitting up by his neck or slamming into his thighs would be preferable, but he can’t do that here. So he’ll take what he can get. And everyone in the room, the other four kids, are watching again. Not just him, mostly the tiefling girl. He’s already the weird kid, he doesn’t have that much to lose. 

He starts tapping on the desk again, intentional this time. The rhythm isn’t much like the tiefling girl’s chord progression, at least not in style. It’s hard and frenetic and fast, the kind of beat out of the most metal of the metal songs he listens to. Even so, though, they work together. 

It sounds pretty good. 

That’s when the tiny kid with the briefcase at his side seems to light up, hopping out of his desk and rushing over to a little basket of recorders in the corner behind the desk. He brings the thing to his lips and starts riffing, a goofy line that takes a moment to settle into anything that makes sense. It lasts a couple bars longer than the tiefling girl’s pattern and Gorgug’s own before it loops back to the beginning again. Who knew that the music lessons that unified every third-grader would come in such handy. 

There’s a couple little ukeleles on a shelf, too, and seemingly emboldened by whatever the hell is going on between Gorgug and the other two the redhead leaps up and grabs one. She actually takes a second to tune it before jumping into the jam session, sitting on the corner of the teacher’s desk and bobbing her head to the beat. 

Gorgug watches, keeping half his brain concentrated on maintaining the rhythm, as the guy who’d punched him and the scared-looking elf girl exchange glances. Then the letterman jacket guy starts to hum. It sounds kind of familiar - a classical piano melody, maybe? 

It’s an eclectic mix of styles, but they mesh together in a way that seems kind of intentional. They all keep up their patterns. Usually, looping something for this long would be monotonously boring, but this… to Gorgug’s ears, at least, it’s pleasant to keep hearing. 

It goes on like this for a while, the five of them jamming to their little melody and the sixth girl looking scared. But she opens her mouth to sing. 

Her voice is thin and mystical, something that floats lightly over the wild mishmash of improvisations. Each note is hesitant - she’s making it up as she goes along, clearly - but it fits, it works, somehow she knows just what notes go where, when to change, when to sustain, when to breathe. 

God, it sounds like magic. 

They do this for a little while. A minute, maybe. Two. It felt like forever in Gorgug’s mind for everything to come together but it had probably only taken thirty seconds. He lives in the sound, and he thinks the others do too. 

And then, the elven girl’s breath hitches, and she falls silent. Gorgug, suddenly self-conscious, stops tapping his desk at the same time the guy who’d punched him ceases humming. The green kid lets the hand holding the recorder drop to his side. And the redhead and the tiefling girl just stop, after that. 

It’s quiet. It’s awkward. It’s tense. For the hour that’s the rest of detention, Gorgug tries to imagine his playlist, but his brain supplies their weird little improv instead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up next: fig makes an impulsive decision (like that's a surprise to anyone)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some might say i throw life away, i just don't have time to save

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary lyric from [busy doing nothing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Sx9TjC614) by ace wilder

**Kristen**

One of the kids from yesterday’s detention is in her studio art elective. 

It’s one of the green guys, orc or half-orc maybe, and he sits in the back of the classroom near the textbooks and the open window, and he keeps his head down and doesn’t look at the teacher or anyone else for the entire class, just staring at the desk. Doesn’t get up for a colored pencil or an eraser or anything. 

Kristen knows this because when she’s not scribbling doodles or scraps of poetry onto her fancy paper, she watches him. 

Kristen had had friends - church girls she’d grown up with, mostly - but this summer they’d grown apart. Most of them had ended up at other schools; namely, the Helioic private school in a suburb of Bastion City. They didn’t really keep up with each other anymore, and Kristen for the most part didn’t mind that. A couple others had ended up at Mumple, and had made a cursory effort over the summer at reaching out to Kristen, but even so it felt shallow. She’s the only church camp kid to have ended up at Aguefort, at least in her own year. So far, it’s kind of lonely, which is a new feeling for Kristen. 

But she’ll make new friends. It’s only the second day. It’s okay, right?

Making friends with the kids from detention could be kind of cool. Yeah, her parents would freak if she told them she’d had a pretty good time in detention, at least for a moment, with a goblin, a half-orc, and a tiefling. But she truly had had a good time. It was maybe kind of childish, but it felt good to just make stuff up, loop it, and follow everyone else’s lead, working together almost as of one mind. 

Her parents are purists, anyway, Kristen muses as she scribbles one cartoon YES!, then another, then a YES? for variety, around the edges of her paper, absolutely not paying attention to whatever is happening at the front of the room about lines or shading or whatever. Just last night they’d gotten into an argument about how Kristen needed highlighters for her Common class so she could highlight different parts of words. Her mom had asked why Kristen couldn’t be learning an old human language like Illuskan, and Kristen had said,  _ no one even speaks those languages anymore, Mom _ , and had very diplomatically refrained from pointing out that they were having that conversation in Common, using loanwords from Dwarven and Elvish and grammar derived from Halfling. In the seventh and eighth grades, she’d had to diagram sentences based on the origin of the words and grammar particles. It was mind-bending, but also kind of cool. And it had been one of those things that had started seeding doubt into Kristen’s mind. Just because all the important worship stuff was in Old Thorassian didn’t mean it was the best language. The other ones they talked about in Common class were pretty cool too. 

She’d be open to befriending the other kids, if she ever got the opportunity. But Kristen’s watched enough high school movies to know that’s not how it goes. After the fateful detention or party or lock-in or what have you, the friends from different cliques always went back to ignoring each other. It’s not like that guy with the letterman jacket would ever acknowledge Kristen in the halls. And, hell, Kristen herself had had first period biology with the briefcase kid, whose name she hasn’t picked up yet (but she’s heard a couple people calling him “the Ball”?), and she hadn’t said anything to him, nor he her. 

Her parents hadn’t even asked why she’d come home late. Any real conversation about school had been stymied by her little brothers having a food fight. After dinner, Kristen had taken a forty-five minute shower. It hadn’t made her feel any better. 

The kid in her art class, she thinks his name is Gorgug, but she’s not sure. She thinks maybe they’ve had classes together before, when they were littler. His posture is tight with tension, and when the art teacher, Mr. Tomblast, comes up behind him to take a look at his work, he startles. 

Kristen gets up and grabs a pack of watercolors, but instead of introducing herself through her art or whatever it is she’s supposed to be doing, she keeps glancing back to that back corner. Possibly-Gorgug isn’t doing his assignment either. Sure, he’s staring at it, but he’s drumming a rhythm onto the side of the stool with one hand. 

It’s the rhythm from yesterday. 

He looks up, for the first time all period, and notices Kristen noticing him. He stops tapping. 

Who is she kidding. The detention kids will stay a memory, nothing more. 

* * *

**Fig**

“How was school?” her mother asks her over pancakes and bacon, at the dinner table that’s tucked squarely into the corner now that it’s just the two of them. 

“I’m starting a band,” Fig says instead. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“I’m starting,” Fig repeats, “a band.” 

She sees her mom sigh rather than hears it. She gets this kind of reaction a lot - more nowadays, when she’d picked up the bass and started tearing up her clothes - but she hadn’t been a stranger to it even before that. Young Fig had done a lot of impulsive things too. She’d climbed one tree too many and one branch too high; she’d written in Sharpie all over one wall in her bedroom; when she’d gotten it into herself that she ought to learn how to cook and ended up setting off the fire alarm. 

“Fig, I know you want to do music for a living -” this is true “ - and I know you don’t like school -” this is also true “ - but you have to do high school anyway. After you graduate you can do whatever you want. I promise. But you have to get through Aguefort first.” 

Fig rolls her eyes theatrically, emphatically enough that it feels like her whole head moves. “No, mom,” she responds, voice flat. “I’m starting a band  _ at school _ .” 

Her mom blinks at her. “Oh… okay? Who is this band with?”

Fig shrugs nonchalantly. “I don’t know their names yet. I’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Fig…” 

“Mom. Seriously.” God, she’s so sick of people not taking her ideas seriously. Yeah, Fig makes a lot of plans she doesn’t follow through on. She has enough trouble getting her homework on time. But this one is gonna be the one that finally works. She doesn’t care what it takes, she’s going to make it happen. 

* * *

**Riz**

There’s a note on his locker when he approaches it after seventh period. 

Riz likes mysteries. He’d grown up on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown, and his mom’s police job had only compounded that interest. Almost anything, to Riz, is a mystery to be solved. Himself. Other people. Why the Strongtower Luxury Apartments has the word  _ luxury _ in the name. Why their landlord sucks. His mom’s cases, if she leaves the files lying out at the wrong time. 

A note on his locker - he can tell the handwriting is neat and font-like even from this far away, thin black pen on a yellow post-it stuck to the dusty blue metal - is the perfect new mystery. 

_ coincidence or destiny? _ _  
_ _ whatever it was, we need to talk. _ __  
_ meet at basrar’s after school. _ _  
_ __ -fig

Riz doesn’t know anyone named Fig. There’s a few mysteries to be solved here - who is Fig, what do they want with him, what do they need to talk about, how did they find his locker number when it’s only the second day of school and Riz barely remembers it himself. 

With that many questions, a lesser man than Riz might not show at Basrar’s after school. Someone else would get caught on all the unknowns, decide it’s too risky, and not go. 

Riz is not that person. 

Basrar’s is the ice cream shop across the street from the school. From what Riz has gleaned from his classmates - specifically the AV kids, who he’d ended up running with after all - it’s  _ the  _ place to hang out after school. Grabbing a table is, apparently, notoriously hard. It’s all silvery metal on the outside and, once he steps inside, it’s air conditioned. The floor is blue tile, the booth seats are blue with silver tables. Everything about this place feels like a refrigerator. 

He doesn’t know who he’s looking for, until his eyes catch on reddish skin and curling horns poking up from one of the corner booths near the back. Fig must be someone from detention yesterday. 

Only two of the other kids are there. The tiefling girl, who introduces herself as the mysterious Fig, today in a red plaid skirt and a tee shirt tucked into it that’s way too big for her, is one. The other is the human girl, wearing another tie-dye shirt, this time a hot pink and yellow one that clashes horribly with her red ponytail. He recognizes her from first-period biology. He thinks her name is Kristen. 

“I’m-” he starts to introduce himself in turn, but Fig cuts him off. 

“You’re Riz. We know.” 

He blinks. “You… know…?”

“I went around this morning. Got everyone’s names,” she says nonchalantly. 

Weird, but not something Riz wouldn’t do necessarily. Sure. “How did you find my locker, though.”

“Broke into Goldenhoard’s office at second passing period.” Fig tells them this totally blase. Again, not something Riz wouldn’t do, but…  _ what _ ?

This seems to be new information to Kristen as well, who makes a face. “What do you mean you  _ broke in _ ? How?” Her hands are splayed flat on the table, but her fingers jump and dance, like she’s typing. Must be a nervous habit. 

Fig seems happy to explain, but she barely gets two words in before someone else approaches their table. It’s the girl who’d sung yesterday, someone whose name Riz now knows to be Adaine Abernant, because Biz from the AV group thinks she’s pretty and had gone out of his way to learn her name and then monologue about her “delicate elven beauty” when she’d passed by the lunch table earlier. 

Riz has fallen in with a bunch of losers, and he hates it, but honestly after yesterday’s trash can spectacle he’s just glad people are talking to him. 

Adaine seems just as nervous as she had yesterday, and when she’d passed the lunch table earlier. Her eyes dart all over the place, vigilant almost, and when she sits she sticks to the very edge of the booth, nearly falling off. 

“Hey,” he says. “Adaine, right?” 

She nods. Her blonde hair, shiny and glossy, falls like a sheet over half her face, hiding her. “D’you know what this is about?”

“I mean, I guess it’s about yesterday,” he answers, voice low, leaning across the table a little to be sure that Adaine hears. “But I don’t know what  _ about _ yesterday.” 

That's when the last two faces from detention - Fabian Seacaster, football prodigy and one of the first people to call Riz “briefcase kid”, and the half-orc guy who seems just as uncomfortable in his own skin as Adaine - show up. Neither of them say anything, just acknowledge everyone else's presence and wordlessly negotiate themselves a place to sit.

It’s the six of them in the booth, now. They have to squish a little bit to all fit. Fig at the center, in the exact place where the corner curves; Riz and Kristen on either side; Adaine trying to shrink herself to fit between Kristen and Fabian, the latter of which is manspreading and clearly undecided about being here; and the other guy, next to Riz, as green as he is and as large as Fabian but trying to take up about as much space as Adaine. 

“So,” Fig starts. “I’m Fig. I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here today.” 

“Could I get everyone’s names, actually?” Adaine speaks up in the dramatic pause Fig had left. Fig seems a little miffed, and Adaine looks like she’s regretting speaking up, but she continues. “I’m sorry, I just - I’m new here, I went to private school before this, so I don’t really know anyone at this school.” 

Starting with Fabian, everyone goes around the table and introduces themselves. The one guy whose name Riz hadn’t known turns out to be called Gorgug. 

“Yeah, so Fig, enlighten us,” Riz pushes. “Why… are we here?”

Fig smiles devilishly - an apt adjective, considering she’s tiefling. As soon as that thought enters Riz’s head, he laughs to himself. She leans forward, conspiratorial almost, something lighting up her eyes. 

“I think we should start a band.”

_ What? _

The faces around him echo his own reaction. Fabian scowls, Adaine seems confused, Gorgug looks almost cornered. Only Kristen doesn’t seem instantly on-guard. 

“No, listen,” Fig continues. “What happened yesterday - I know you all felt it. It was something else. We just… made music together. We should keep doing that. It could be really great.”

“Fig, I mean,” Fabian contradicts. “Not all of us are musicians. We were just improvising. And how are you going to make music with a  _ rubber band _ and a  _ recorder _ ?”

Riz takes the recorder comment with some insult. He actually played the oboe in middle school, he still has the instrument, but he feels like admitting that in front of this crowd wouldn’t be the best idea right now. 

“I own an electric bass. And I know how to play it,” Fig counters. “I don’t mean just fucking around in the classroom. I mean with  _ real instruments _ .” 

“I have a guitar. Like, a real one,” Kristen adds. “I don’t know, guys, maybe it could be fun. High school band… think about it. Fig’s right, it could be kinda cool.” 

Everyone’s quiet for a second, as Fabian scoffs, and Fig looks at Kristen with some gratefulness. Riz considers. An oboe is not really a traditional band instrument, but whatever it is that had come together yesterday hadn’t been traditional either. It had worked, even with the obvious mishmash of genres coming from all corners of the room. 

These people seem like they’d be better friends than the AV kids, at least. 

“If everyone else is in, I’m in,” he says finally. “But only if all six of us agree.”

“There! See?” Fig exclaims. “That’s half of us! Come on,” she pushes, looking pleadingly at Fabian, Adaine, and Gorgug. “We’re freshmen. By the time we graduate, we could have a  _ following _ .”

“I can have that anyway,” mutters Fabian. “Football. Speaking of which, I couldn’t do anything that would interfere with practice.”

“Okay, we can meet when you don’t have sports stuff.” Fig bats the excuse aside. “It’s fine. We can work around it. Do you play a real instrument, Fabian?”

“I took classical piano for six years,” he says, and then flushes mahogany. Riz can understand how a jock might not want to admit something like that in public.

“I don’t know.” It’s Adaine who speaks up now. She’s biting her lip, still clearly anxious. “I’ve never done anything in front of crowds before, not really. The last time I even had to do public speaking…” She shudders. “It just. It just wasn’t great for me. So I’m not sure.”

“But you just said you don’t know anyone,” Fig pleads. “This would be a great way to get to know people. Get to know  _ us _ .”

The guy behind the counter, presumably Basrar, calls over to ask if any of them are going to order. Riz blushes forest green, and there’s an awkward shuffle as Fig, Fabian, and Kristen get up, forcing the other three to stand and sit back down and then stand again. At least it’s not just him who isn’t getting anything. 

Once they’re all back in place, Gorgug, who had previously been content to stay silent and bounce one of his legs up and down at a speed that made Riz wonder - he does the leg bounce thing too, is that really how it looks to other people? - finally adds his two cents. 

“I think it’d be nice, actually. Fig’s right. I don’t really know a lot of people.” He stares at the table the entire time he says this. 

Adaine throws up her hands. “Fine. I’m - I’ll - Fabian, if you -” she manages, giving him a look that seems almost pleading, but Riz isn’t sure if Adaine wants Fabian to say yes or no. 

“We’ll do it this way.” Fabian sighs. He shifts his weight in the seat. He reaches down with one arm to rummage around in his bag, eventually pulling out a quarter. “Heads we do it. Tails, I’m out, the rest of you can figure it out on your own.” 

He flips the coin

it goes up and around

Riz leans forward

so does everyone else

over the cups of ice cream

to watch as the coin spins in the air

it lands on the laminated menu in front of Fig. 

Heads. 

Everyone’s in. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when kristen talks about common, i'm drawing from a tumblr post about how common as a d&d language is much more interesting if it evolved as a combination of the various heritage-specific languages used for trade, so you end up with, like, elven words for wine and fine art and music and whatever, and dwarven words for metal, and so on and so forth. i can't find the post rn for some reason but when i do i'll link it here. the names for the human languages were randomly stolen from the forgotten realms wikia haha. i love languages and i thought the post in question was super cool so i couldn't resist tossing it in there as some worldbuilding :)
> 
> the end scene originally had adaine magehanding the coin flip (as a little nod to episode 9) but then i wrote six more chapters and realized that that was the only instance i wrote any of them using magic ever so i went back and took it out, but it's important that you know it was there lol
> 
> up next: friendships are negotiated and songs are written, sometimes at the same time


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i don't wanna be somebody, just wanna be me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary lyric from [wannabe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgiN9zNZCuM) by itzy (please don't judge me for my music choices lol)
> 
> i also think i should make clear here that i'm drawing a lot of the plot from the lemonade mouth book as opposed to the movie, and the multiple-perspectives-per-chapter thing is also in the style of the original book, which not a lot of people know exists? but like if things feel repetitive/off plot-wise that probably means it's from the book

**Riz**

They meet at Fabian’s house, because it’s the biggest, the next Thursday after school. Fig brings her bass guitar and amp. Kristen brings a guitar. Adaine and Fabian had gone to Fabian’s house together, clearly, because Adaine sits at the table maintaining awkward conversation in Elven with Fabian’s mom. It’s obvious that they’ve been there a while. When she sees Riz, she shoots him this look that’s like  _ oh god get me out of here _ , and so Riz says, “come on, Adaine, I think we’re ready” (even though they weren’t), and Adaine stands and then the two of them hover awkwardly into the hallway until Gorgug arrives with no drums, just drumsticks. Fabian tells Gorgug not to worry because he has his own drum set. Riz and Adaine exchange a weird look at that. What kind of person owns a drum set and never plays it?

Riz also kind of wants to see the look on Fig’s face if someone were to tell her that Gorgug didn’t actually own a drum set. He thinks it’d be interesting. 

Eh. He’s sure Fig will make plenty of other faces over the course of the rehearsal. 

He sure makes some faces of his own, looking around Fabian’s house. It’s  _ huge _ . Like, Riz had had no idea that houses could be this big before. Fabian’s house is a repurposed ship, most of its exterior walls curving, and inside it’s gilded and tiled and full of knickknacks. Glass cabinets with tiny ceramic animals or jewelry that Riz is sure can’t be real. He barely remembers to close his mouth. 

They don’t even practice in Fabian’s room. This house has a designated music room, which absolutely blows Riz’s mind. 

He’s proven right about Fig’s expressions. She makes a choice face when he assembles his oboe, that’s for sure, and when he says that they have to wait five minutes to start doing anything because he has to soak his reeds. She makes a face when they  _ do _ start, and almost no one can keep up with what she wants them to play. 

“What is this music, Fig,” Fabian says, shaking his head, after their rehearsals had stuttered to a halt for the fourth or fifth time. Fig’s playing them audio clips of punk-rock-something and expecting them to be able to get it all by ear. But it’s not going well. Gorgug’s keeping up fine, but Adaine sounds wispy and unstable trying to sing some of these lyrics, and Riz is struggling himself - he remembers how to  _ play _ the oboe fine, but he always had sheet music when he’d tried to mimic something, and it’s been years since he’d played for a purpose beyond annoying the young couple who’d been his neighbors when he was in middle school. Fabian’s fingers stumble over the keyboard, like he barely remembers how to play, and Kristen’s acoustic guitar is clearly not what Fig wants. 

“Good music,” she defends. “Come on, guys. I know this is hard, but we’ll get it! I promise!”

“Okay, but what if we don’t?” Riz counters. “This is… I’m not gonna try and speak for everyone else, but this is outside of  _ my _ comfort zone. Fig, maybe we should just… give up the ghost on this one.” He flops into one of the many, many armchairs in this particular room of Fabian’s house. 

Fig scowls. “Oh, you all are just quitters. Don’t start with the-”

“No, I think he’s right,” Kristen interjects, and then Fabian jumps in, telling everyone to get out of his house if they weren’t going to do anything productive and that he  _ knew _ this was a mistake. Adaine looks like a deer in the headlights; Riz can see her eyes lose focus and her breathing quicken. This is a disaster. 

“So you’re just gonna  _ kick us out _ ? Come on, we can’t fail, none of us want this to-”

“It’s not my fault my only experience is with  _ worship music _ -” 

“If you keep on yelling you  _ will _ wake up my mama, and that will be a  _ feat _ because this room is soundproofed-”

Riz is left watching the three of them shout at each other, eyes bouncing between them like a ball bounces between people at a tennis match (hey, maybe there’s something to that nickname after all). Adaine mouths something about not having a way home and Gorgug’s hands are over his ears and Riz is grimacing, there’s  _ so much noise _ and it’s out of his control and none of it is resolving into anything that makes any sense-

And then, through all the crosstalk, there’s a drumbeat. 

It’s not much, really. It’s a speedy, nimble rhythm, light on the snare, with an occasional pedal to the bass drum. It sounds like a call to action. 

And Riz is called. Gorgug makes eye contact with one of them for the first time all day, maybe even in all of the three total times they’ve interacted, and it’s with Riz, and it’s pleading, it’s encouraging. 

Riz shoots up, oboe in hand, and then he raises the thing to his lips and he puffs out one of the lines he’d use to bother his former neighbors. They’d sucked, their room was on the other side of Riz’s bedroom wall, and they’d made lots of noise late at night. On the nights his mom wasn’t home and he didn’t have to worry about waking her up, he’d pull out the thing and play until they stopped. It’s short and rhythmic and all over the place, jauntier than the serious and simpler thing Gorgug’s pounding out, but just like in detention, he keeps at it. 

Kristen is the first of the arguers to break from her shock at whatever’s happening, and picks her guitar up again. She plucks out something slow and smooth but it’s in just the right meter and rhythm and key. Fabian sits back down at the hopelessly expensive and blindingly white piano. Fig’s eyes light up wild, and her bass hammers out something quick and fast, not far from what she’d been having them play before . It’s like they all know when to pull back at the same time, Kristen and Fabian and Riz simplifying, Fig quieting, Gorgug pulling a beat out here and there. And Adaine comes in, just like they’d known she would, with something soft that fits her voice perfectly, pretty and delicate but not as quiet as they’d expected her to be. Riz doesn’t pay too much attention to the lyrics, but it’s something that rhymes desperation and frustration, something about needing and wanting something she should have but doesn’t. The six of them work as one mind. They even cut off together. 

Kristen speaks first. “Holy  _ shit _ .” 

* * *

**Fabian**

Fabian has, through luck that even an unsolicited bribe wouldn’t be able to explain, ended up sitting with the cool seniors at lunch. 

Dayne Blade, quarterback, heartthrob. Ragh Barkrock, wide receiver, second-in-command. Penelope Everpetal, Dayne’s girlfriend, half-elf like Fabian himself. Sam Nightingale, Penelope’s best friend forever. A rotating cast of football guys and yearbook club girls. Fabian is, so far, two weeks into the year, the only freshman. 

“I’m so glad we finally got prom approved,” Penelope gushes to Sam. “Now Dayne and I can be prom king and queen and we can have the high school experience everyone dreams about.” 

Sam makes a face. “I mean, other people might run. Right?” 

Penelope scoffs. “Yeah, but they won’t  _ win _ . Besides, with prom approved, Dayne and I aren’t gonna run for Ice Court.” 

“Ice Court?” asks Fabian. 

“Yeah,” Sam explains. She’s usually the first to explain things to him. “Ice Prince and Ice Princess. For the winter formal, in December, right before the break.” Fabian nods. “Penelope and Dayne won last year. For a long time it’s been our only school dance.” 

“But not anymore!” Penelope’s glee is apparent on her face. She reaches over and steals one of Sam’s cheese fries. “We have a funding deal with KVX Bank now. I know ‘cause my dad’s on the school board,” she slips in. Sam sighs, like this is something Penelope brings up a lot - but Fabian doesn’t really fault her. Fabian does the same thing, slipping in that he’s the son of Bill Seacaster in every other conversation. Works wonders on his popularity, really. “So now we can have more than one dance,  _ and _ we’re getting a new scoreboard.” 

Fabian has heard the buzz around the new scoreboard. The old one seems nice enough, but it’s a little dated, a little dingy. Coach Daybreak and the upperclassmen on the football team are really excited about the new one. Top of the line, state of the art, what have you. Apparently, they’d had to cut a couple smaller programs to really make the budget work, but what did the football team care? They were kings of the school. 

“Maybe  _ I’ll _ run for Ice King,” Fabian jokes. Well, he’s not sure if he’s kidding. Running for Ice King and winning is the kind of thing his dad would  _ love _ \- Ice Court as a freshman is, like, the ultimate mark of high school dominance. 

“Yes, absolutely!” gushes Danielle, a junior in the yearbook club with Penelope and Sam. She’s tall, half-elf like Fabian, with hair that Fabian hasn’t been able to figure out yet if it’s blonde or brown. She’s very pretty, and one of the more popular juniors. “Oooh, winter formal could be, like, the freshman-sophomore dance! That’d be so cute.” 

“Well.” Fabian sits up straighter, tries to widen his shoulders, take up more space, look big like Dayne and Ragh. “I don’t think I’d ask a sophomore. Maybe a junior.” He raises his eyebrows and and shoots a look in Danielle’s direction. 

Penelope laughs. “As  _ if _ ,” she giggles. Is that even a word people use anymore? “You’re only a freshman. Your daddy’s money can only get you so far.” 

Sam mutters something under her breath that Fabian doesn’t catch. Neither does Penelope, seemingly, who shrugs and turns back to Dayne, tossing an arm over his shoulders. Danielle elbows Sam in the ribs, and they make a series of concerned expressions at each other. 

“ _ I _ hear,” Sam picks back up - she has to wave her hand towards Penelope’s face to get her attention. “That they’re gonna get DJ Brainzz to play prom.” 

Fabian’s heard of DJ Brainzz. He plays at clubs all over Solace, including Elmville’s own Black Pit. He’s never been one for club music himself, but many of the other kids in Elmville’s richer families - most of Fabian’s middle school friends - had been all about it, so he was literate in the guy’s discography. 

“But how?” asks a junior, another starter on the football team whose name continues to escape Fabian. “Isn’t he, like, impossible to book?”

“Well.” Sam leans in, a smile lighting up her face. Fabian assumes she’s excited to be the one with the hot gossip for once. “Apparently… d’you guys know Zayn Darkshadow? The weird goth kid?” 

“The one that got kicked out of theatre?” 

“Yeah,” Sam continues. “Apparently he and DJ Brainzz, like, go way back.” 

Penelope scoffs. “How does anyone even know anything about prom, anyway? It’s not for  _ months _ .” 

“I heard it from Johnny,” Sam answers proudly, and the rest of the table - including Fabian - rolls their eyes. Sam’s boyfriend Johnny is her favorite topic of conversation. He’s older and doesn’t go to school and he has a motorcycle and a band and possibly a gang. “He and his boys were seeing about trying to get the booking, but… well…”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Fabian registers something from earlier. “You can get kicked out of theatre?”

Danielle shrugs. “Apparently.” 

“Yeah,” Ragh pushes in. “He was such a fucking… a fucking, uhh… loser that not even the theatre losers wanted him!” He and Dayne share a laugh at what is, in Fabian’s opinion, a kind of pathetic insult. 

“Anyway,” Sam continues, shaking her head at Dayne and Ragh. “It’s not a huge loss. He’s still going to play the Ice Ball like he does every year. I know you haven’t heard their music yet, Fabian,” she says, looking over at him, “but trust me. They’re good.” 

“They’re better than you’d expect,” Danielle reassures him. 

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She laughs. “I know Sam’s kind of an unreliable narrator sometimes-”

“Hey!” interjects Sam. 

“-but for real, they’re good. Look them up when you get the chance. Everyone here just loves them.” 

“I’m so lucky to be dating him,” Sam sighs. 

Fabian focuses on his sandwich - artisan bread, with a toothpick stuck through the middle courtesy of Cathilda. It feels too large, too flashy in his hands, especially when across from Sam and Danielle’s standard hot lunches. 

He pulls the toothpick out and tosses it on the floor, trying to just listen to Sam gushing about her boyfriend for the fourth time today. But he’s distracted - they all are, really - by some commotion from the other end of the table. 

“Hey, it’s the Ball!” Ragh shouts. Fabian looks up and, yeah, it’s the oboe guy. Dayne joins in on the jeering, but Riz doesn’t seem upset. Frustrated, if anything, but for the most part expressionless. Dogged. 

For some reason, this bothers Fabian. 

He can’t let it bother him, though. He has to be king of the school, and the band might not fit into that picture but the football guys liking him sure does. Danielle and Sam are giggling as Penelope starts figuring out ways to pun “the Ball” and “briefcase kid” together, and so Fabian laughs. It is kind of funny. 

The other day at his house had been more of a hassle than it should have been. These other five kids have weird, competing personalities that are nothing like what Fabian’s used to. He’s not sure he’ll keep doing this whole band thing. It means he doesn’t have any free time directly after school - the other four days are devoted to football practice. And he needs to stay in good graces with the football people. Well, it’s not that he needs to. He  _ wants _ to. They’re cool. 

So when Riz passes, Fabian joins in, shouting, “hey there, the Ball!”. He isn’t sure if he feels better or worse, noticing that Riz doesn’t even seem disappointed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> help what's a football. 
> 
> up next: high school isn't fair


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i know where i'm going, just don't know how or when

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title lyric from [lost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2pMF2HvRbU) by faarrow 
> 
> content warning for this chapter for discussions of adaine and kristen's parents 
> 
> also i want to make clear here that i'm writing riz and fig as adhd and gorgug as autistic, and all three of these portrayals are drawn from my own experience with having both those things. none of them ever discuss it explicitly, but it's important to me that y'all know it's there.

**Adaine**

She doesn’t know how they’re still together. Every time they get together to rehearse it just dissolves into arguing. But somehow, between Riz’s skill at reading people and Fig and Kristen’s sheer determination, they leave every rehearsal agreeing to just give it one more try. 

They can’t keep improvising stuff forever, of course. Which is why Adaine and Kristen are here, on the bleachers, home-game side of the football field, eating (or ignoring) their lunch and valiantly attempting to song-write. It’s October and cloudy, and Adaine’s thighs are chilly where they touch the silver metal. Her clothes have gone mysteriously missing, replaced all with knockoff versions of the Hudol uniform. Aelwyn’s doing, no doubt. Adaine really is going to kill her someday. 

So it’s her in a skirt and Kristen in a tie-dye that somehow Adaine’s never seen her in before. It’s cold and grey out, but not wet yet, so there’s staff paper that Fig probably liberated from the music room spread across the bench between them. Their matching lunch-line paper plates of pizza are abandoned by their feet. 

They’ve started doing this a lot. Not every day, but most. Some days it’s out on the bleachers. Some days it’s in the second floor book closet. Some days it’s in the library. Sometimes Fig’s there, too. So far, they’ve been trying to transcribe the two songs their little group had accidentally-on-purpose improvised, because trying to just Remember How It Goes has led to a fair amount of frustration in rehearsals, but earlier this week they had finally gotten both songs down (and put together some cursory lyrics, too!), so now they’re trying their hand at writing something totally new. Kristen has a knack for lyrics and a decent amount of guitar training, and Adaine has three years of Hudol music theory classes. 

“How about this? As an opener?” Kristen offers, humming a low, rhythmic set of notes. G, if Adaine’s guessing it right. She’s still new to the whole “notes are named after letters of the alphabet” thing. 

“For Fig?” Kristen nods. “She’d hate that,” Adaine laughs, “but it sounds good. Let’s go with that.” She mimics the rhythm back to Kristen, just to make sure she’s getting it right. 

“You’re good at this,” Kristen tells her. 

“I’m just writing it down.”

“No, yeah. Like, you’re good at that.” 

Adaine blinks at her. 

“When you hear notes, you know exactly where on the lines they go. I can’t do that. You have perfect pitch, Adaine.” 

Adaine blinks at her again. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s like…” Kristen moves her hands around, struggling to find the words to explain. “Just, like, an innate thing. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You mean, you don’t hear this note-” Adaine hums something “-and know that it’s the one Fig starts on in the first one from detention?” 

Kristen shakes her head. 

“Weird.” Adaine sighs. She scoots back a little so she can flop down onto her back and stare up at the clouds. “Just think. All this time I’ve been supernaturally good at something and I didn’t even know. I took so much music theory at the Hudol lower school and this just never came up.” 

“I’m sure you’re good at a lot of things.” 

One of the things Adaine knows about Kristen is that she’s good at building people up. Kristen has let slip things about years of church events and affirmation circles and doing damage control with her parents; she’s also good, though, at mediating between Fig and everyone else, at getting everyone off Riz’s back about the stupid oboe, at knowing when Gorgug or Adaine or both of them just need everybody to shut up. It usually starts off kind of weird, with Kristen going on a long tangent about faith and her childhood, often riddled with curse words, but at some point in rehearsal (or at their ever-more-frequent group lunches), the opportunity arises for Kristen to be inspiring. When Kristen believes in something so much - the band, or the power of friendship, or whatever individual she’s talking to - it’s hard not to believe right along with her. 

Don’t ever get Kristen started on religion, though, because her increasing confusion about the subject always leaves everyone else scratching their heads. 

“Tell that to my parents,” Adaine mutters, staring at the clouds. “My sister’s top of her class at Hudol. My mom teaches advanced arcane studies there. My dad’s the fucking ambassador from Fallinel. And I… I mean, my grades are  _ okay _ , but every time I take a test I just freeze up.” 

It’s the truth. They’d had their first test of the year in history the day before. Adaine had stared at the paper for ten minutes. Everything she’d learned had just fled her memory, and she couldn’t do anything more than guess. 

Mr. Rockstone hadn’t commented on the tearstains on the test when she’d handed it in. Adaine’s thankful for that, at least. 

“That’s what happened when I took the test to get into Hudol’s upper school. That’s why I’m here. I’m just a disappointment, now.” 

Thunder rumbles in the distance. It’s going to rain soon and they should really get back to their staff paper if they don’t want to get rained on and have to go back inside before the period ends, but Adaine doesn’t feel like working on it right now. 

It’s the first time she’s told any of the five of them the real reason why she’s here instead of Hudol. She usually just handwaves it away, and to their credit they usually drop it. 

Adaine has just done something big, it feels like. 

“I get that.” 

Privately, Adaine thinks that Kristen doesn’t, really. 

“I mean, my whole life I was the model church kid. When I was little, I told people I wanted to be a pastor when I grew up. I knew all the prayers by heart. And now… over the summer all my church friends and I grew apart. They’re all going to school other places.” Adaine hears a noise that’s probably Kristen leaning back to stare at the sky herself. “And I’ve started thinking, about some of the stuff my parents say. About… well, about elves. And orcs and goblins and stuff like that. It feels weird. It feels wrong. And I don’t know how to tell them that. But I think it’s leaking through. They can tell. I know that. Because my parents have started holding me at arm’s length. They say they just don’t have time, that they can’t keep up with me, but I know it’s because I’ve started questioning the faith.” 

Well. Looks like Adaine was wrong. “That’s really shitty, Kristen,” she says as thunder sounds again. 

“And I’ve been reading up on the history. The church of Helio has done some really awful things over the years. And it seems like everyone just doesn't know or they don’t want to talk about it. But they’re… just, really bad things. The church just hates everyone, and they’ve always hated everyone, and I don’t think I can get any of them to stop.” 

She doesn’t really know how to respond to that. So Adaine sits up, swings one leg up, then the other, to sit criss cross applesauce, and to watch Kristen, still lying on her back, staring up at the darkening horizon. 

“Adaine, can I tell you something? And will you - will you promise you won’t tell anyone?” 

“Of course.” 

Kristen sits up, shoulders slumped, like whatever she’s about to say is as heavy as the weight of the sky. She doesn’t turn to look at Adaine, but Adaine reaches over and takes Kristen’s hand. 

“Adaine, I like girls.” 

The first drops of rain begin to fall. 

“That’s okay.” 

Kristen turns to look at her. “You’re sure?” And then, “wait, fuck-” as the two of them realize they need to put their paper away. It’s a mad dash to collect everything and shove it in one or both of their backpacks, and then they’re off at a run, pausing only to toss their untouched lunches into a trash can. The rain quickens, and it’s not the shortest distance ever back to the school doors, so they’re both pretty wet by the time they’re back inside, rainwater dripping from their hair and down their fingers onto the grey and red linoleum. 

“Thanks for trusting me with that, Kristen. Really.” 

Their eyes meet, and the moment  _ almost _ feels serious, but then it hits them both just how ridiculous it is that they’re near-soaked and the bell’s probably going to ring soon and neither of them have a change of clothes and they’re just going to have to go to sixth period like this, and they burst out laughing, and for the first time it feels like they’re really, actually friends. 

* * *

**Gorgug**

This is the fourth time Ragh Barkrock has shoved him into something  _ today _ , and Gorgug knows a lot of people are mad at Fig but he really wishes people would take their anger out on someone else. 

Fig had gotten it into her head that their band, which has three and a half songs and no name, needs to play Ice Ball, and she had talked to Goldenhoard and somehow convinced him to let them do it. But Johnny Spells’ band is popular among the students, and its fans aren’t taking the news well that their time has been halved to accommodate a bunch of freshmen. As far as Gorgug can tell, the popular kids behind most of the ire haven’t figured out that Fabian’s in the band, but they know about him, and Fig, and Riz. 

School isn’t going so great. 

Gorgug just kind of presses himself up against the cold of the locker and tries to keep his cool, but… like, he’s sick of this! In middle school the bullying was verbal, and even then it wasn’t so much, he had mostly kept to the sidelines and not talked to anyone and most of the time that was  _ fine _ . He could have survived high school just like that. But no, he  _ had _ to join this stupid band (that he liked a lot, actually), and Fig just  _ had _ to get them to play Ice Ball, and now he’s getting shoved around in a way he really hasn’t ever been before. It pisses him off. 

So he reaches over and grabs Ragh himself and twists, quick and hard and strong, and pushes Ragh into the lockers himself. 

There’s a lot of commotion. 

Gorgug glares at Ragh, who seems shocked to having been bested by one of his favorite targets. “I don’t know if I’ll say this again,” he says. “Leave me the fuck alone.” He pushes Ragh harder against the locker, once more, for effect, and then turns and leaves. 

People are staring. Some stoner kid’s mouth is hanging wide open. A gaggle of theatre kids whisper to each other. A satyr girl, whose locker Gorgug thinks might be next to his, has her eyes wide, and she looks… kind of terrified. 

He doesn’t like getting angry. He’s tall enough now and unpredictable enough already - at least to other people - that he knows it scares people when he lets himself really get mad. It even scares his parents, which Gorgug  _ hates _ . They try to hide it, sure, but they’ve been so aggressive lately about teaching him songs to try and calm himself down that he’s sure it unnerves them. He can’t blame them. As much as Gorgug knows they love him and would support him through anything, they’re gnomes whose adopted half-orc son keeps breaking his own furniture when he gets angry. 

He hates thinking that he’s scaring people. It makes him feel like shit. 

His next class is gym, which he has with Fig. As much as he’s mad at her for getting him into this mess, it’s nice to have someone even sort of like a friend, who will partner up with him for things and talk to him about stuff and walk to lunch together after and sometimes even eat together. It’s a new experience for Gorgug, and it feels nice. He’s not all the way sure that Fig considers them friends - maybe he’s just convenient, she knows him, he’s an asset at dodgeball - but it’s nice to know that every other day there’s someone who will talk to him about just whatever. 

Usually, it’s about how mad she is about something, which makes Gorgug feel a little better about just how much he’s bottling up. 

“...and she  _ still _ won’t tell me who my real dad is. At this point I have half a mind to just move in with Gilear at Strongtower. I mean, he has a real job now,” she says. Gorgug is just tuning in, but she’s been complaining about her mom (again) since he’d walked out of the boys’ locker room. Somehow word had already traveled around about Gorgug giving Ragh a taste of his own medicine; some kid Gorgug thinks might be in the AV club with Riz had looked at Gorgug like he was some kind of hero, and another guy who’s on the football team had just given him a glare. He’s thankful that Fig’s taking his mind off everything, even if she doesn’t know that’s what she’s doing. 

“What’s the real job?”

“Oh, he’s the lunch lad.” 

What’s a lunch lad? “Pardon?”

“Like, the lunch lady,” Fig explains as they walk over to the section of the gym where the freshman class meets. “But a guy. So, y’know. Lunch lad.” 

“... _ here _ ?”

“Yeah!” Fig actually seems excited about it, which is weird considering most of the time she talks about both her parents with a fair amount of disdain. “Apparently Doreen had some kind of medical emergency so they needed a new hire. And I just so happened to be around Goldenrod’s office when they were talking about it and so I texted Gilear and he applied and he has the job now.”

Fig, despite having charmed Goldenhoard into letting their band play at Ice Ball, has a weird and antagonistic relationship with him that includes never using his actual name. How she managed to convince him to let them play Ice Ball is beyond Gorgug. 

“Y’know, this means we  _ really _ need to come up with a name.” It’s a total non sequitur, but it’s whatever. Half of what most of them think about nowadays is band stuff. 

“Yeah,” Fig concurs. She looks off dreamily. “I was thinking… Fig and the Sig Figs, maybe.”

“Fig and the what?” 

“Sig Figs. Significant Figures. Like in math.” 

Gorgug makes a face. “That’s a whole lot of Fig in the name.”

“Well, it was my idea.” She has a point. 

Gym class starts. They have to get into groups of three for some kind of state-mandated fitness something or other, so Fig and Gorgug end up with this guy named Hargis, a quiet, beefy dude who’s wearing a leather vest that puts Gorgug in mind of the Girl Scouts, even over his gym clothes. He’s pretty sure Hargis has been told off by the gym teacher for this before. He’s usually pretty quiet, but he seems to want to talk today. 

“D’you hear they near-totally defunded the theatre department?”

Gorgug doesn’t really know anything about the theatre department. He doesn’t really know anything about most student organizations, except for the AV club because Riz complains about them sometimes. 

“Uh, no,” says Fig, which surprises Gorgug, because somehow Fig always has all the hot gossip. “Tell me more?” 

“Well, to pay for the new scoreboard… the bank only donated so much, so they had to, like, move some more money around,” Hargis explains, as Gorgug does sit-ups and Fig holds his feet down. “And that money came from the theatre department. And the music program. And I think maybe the school newspaper, but I’m not sure.” He seems pretty sad about it. Like, sadder than the average person. 

Fig and Gorgug exchange looks. “That’s kinda fucked up,” Fig says. 

“Isn’t that how high school works, though?” Gorgug asks. They both turn and look at him, which is weird because he’s still doing sit-ups, technically. “I just mean, like… isn’t it a stereotype that schools only care about sports and will cut whatever else because the sports want them to?” 

Fig seems mystified. “The end of that sentence there was just a whole bunch of words and you sure did put them in an order, but I think I get your point. Even so, though, it’s still not  _ fair _ .”

“Since when was high school fair?” mutters Hargis. Gorgug agrees with him. Fig hasn’t received nearly the amount of bullying over the band announcement that he and Riz have, no one makes Adaine and Kristen part of the debate, and and Fabian actively tries to avoid any association with the rest of them. It makes lunch weird, because their lunch table is the five of them who aren’t Fabian and occasionally Riz’s AV club friends. 

Fabian is cool sometimes, Gorgug muses as he and Fig switch places. Why they actually need a third person here is beyond him - to count their repetitions, maybe? Gorgug sure wasn’t keeping track. Anyway, Fabian occasionally offers up music ideas and is more comfortable having them in his house, and it’s gotten to the point where, even though he still calls Riz “the Ball”, it doesn’t feel quite as mean as it does coming from Dayne or Ragh. 

He just cares too much about being cool, is the thing. Aside from Fabian and maybe Fig, none of them could ever even  _ dream _ of being popular. Maybe that’s why they all buy into the band thing so much more than Fabian does. 

“Well.” Fig says to Gorgug, after a while has passed, Hargis has gone to be a sad theatre kid someplace else, and they’re headed back to the locker rooms. “If high school isn’t fair, I guess we’ll just have to make it fair.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, adaine has perfect pitch. yes, i did write this chapter without having seen any of the fh bonus episodes. sorry if i screwed up bdg's theatre boy. 
> 
> important update: school has started for me - i'm in my junior year of college and that means i haven't really been able to write since monday. most of this fic is already written, but this does mean that there might be a delay with the last couple chapters of this fic, and i just want to give people that heads up now. 
> 
> also, though, i think i might make this a series? i've been thinking, and there's so much of this verse that i haven't been able to touch upon enough as much as i'd have liked while writing, namely due to trying to balance both the lemonade mouth and fh1 plots. so it's possible that i might write a few oneshots in this universe as well. if there's something specific you wanna see please comment! 
> 
> also like thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting and kudosing, i have been getting such an incredible response to this fic! it makes me so happy, i love you all! 
> 
> next time: the band gets a name...


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we can't be broken, we can't be shamed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title lyric from [roar like a lion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX4ZpfRUDS0) by keiino ft te hau tawhiti

**Kristen**

She looks forward to lunch together, now. 

Adaine and Fig both know her secret. It’s nice to be around people who know, even if they don’t talk about it in front of the boys, yet; it’s nice to be around Fig, and the bisexual pride pin she keeps on the strap of her backpack. Kristen’s still learning about the words and the labels and stuff, so it’s doubly helpful to have Fig around, Fig who’d started exploring her sexuality even before things had gotten rocky with her parents, Fig who’s a walking dictionary for this sort of stuff. It’s nice to trust them. 

People have started calling their circular table by the vending machines the “freak table”, which is fine. It’s not like they haven’t earned the nickname. Kristen still wears tie-dye shirts every day and Adaine’s wardrobe isn’t any better and while Fig  _ looks _ cool, everyone knows she’s the driving force behind the band that halved Johnny Spells’ set. And then there’s Gorgug and Riz, the guy who’d shoved Ragh Barkrock into a locker and the guy who carries a briefcase around,  _ still _ . 

Riz stands at the vending machine. He’s getting, like, a granola bar or something. Some days he doesn’t bring food, and Kristen and Gorgug aren’t sure if he forgets to or if he doesn’t have food to bring in the first place. Mostly, they keep quiet about it. Fig had made the mistake of asking about Adaine’s eating habits the first day they’d had lunch together; Adaine had explained she was too anxious to eat and then left for the bathroom for ten minutes. But if Kristen surreptitiously drops quarters into Riz’s briefcase on the rare occasion he leaves it open, well, nobody needs to know. 

“... yeah, and they have like this binder with all these definitions of things you’d never even think to think about. It’s like three inches thick. And they didn’t even leave it outside my door either, they came in my room and talked to me about it, which is weird because they’re so much smaller…” 

She pays no attention to what Gorgug is saying and, in fact, hits Adaine who’s next to her on the arm, because Penelope Everpetal and Sam Nightingale are approaching Riz. 

Their table is close enough that Kristen can hear what they’re saying. Something about “just a little snack” and “that’s my favorite”, and then Penelope reaches out and grabs the granola bar, and Kristen sees red. It’s just… it’s just so petty and mean, for no real reason. 

Gorgug has talked sometimes, about getting mad and how it makes him afraid of himself? Yeah, Kristen doesn’t understand that. She’s mad all the time now, and she loves it. Mad at her parents, mad at her church, mad at the history, even mad at herself sometimes. Her fists clench and she stands up and she knows what it means right now to really see red, which is an expression she hadn’t understood before and she and Riz have only been friends for, like, a month and change but still, this is just stupid! Ragh and Dayne and Penelope and their clique have been doing shit like this to them, and to other people too, for the whole school year and probably before too, and everyone just lets them get away with it! Everyone just watches! Just like her parents watch when the Church of Helio’s louder members get up in arms about elves moving into the neighborhood! Kristen has had enough! She’s sick of it! There’s so much suffering in the world and bad things happen to good people and Helio doesn’t have the answer and so Kristen is just gonna have to answer it herself. 

Bad things happen to good people because the mediocre people sit back and watch. 

“Kristen, wait.” Adaine’s voice should be cool and calming at Kristen’s side, but Ragh is showing up now, Fabian behind him looking vaguely nauseated and Kristen is sick of him too, pretending he’s too good for them, so she storms up to the rapidly escalating conflict at the vending machine. 

“You play the, uhh, the fucking, uhhh, the oboe, right?” Ragh says to Riz in probably one of the most mocking voices Kristen’s ever heard. “What even  _ is _ that? What does it even sound like? Your weird little band with your weird instruments.”

“It sounds like a dying duck,” Penelope volunteers. 

Ragh seems to think this is the funniest thing in the world. Kristen really cannot take it anymore. “Will you shut the fuck up,” she says. 

Kristen Applebees is not very tall. She’s average height for a girl, sure, but Ragh Barkrock is  _ very tall _ . So marching up to stand in front of him and challenge him like this should be kind of scary. But she’s not scared. She’s on fire inside, and it fuels her. 

“Oh, you’re gonna make me?” 

She squares her shoulders. “Yeah.” 

With everyone’s attention off him, Riz slips away. Good. It’s fine if they’re mad at  _ her _ , but they’re not allowed to fuck with her friends. 

Ragh looks at the girls and laughs. “She’s gonna make me. Look at this.” 

There is a moment, just a little one, in which Kristen is very scared. But then her eyes meet Fabian’s, Fabian who is  _ still fucking standing there _ , quiet, behind, not getting involved because that’s the  _ safe _ thing to do. 

Bastard. 

And the fire fills her up again and the whole millisecond of fear is replaced with anger once again. 

“Yeah, I will. I will make you. So what. I don’t get why you guys are so against this band so much. I mean, Johnny Spells is kind of a creep. He doesn’t even go here, and how many girls from this high school has he dated? Rumor has it, a lot. So why do you all love his band so much that you’re wasting your time on a couple of freshmen to, like, avenge him? 

“Yeah, we’re freshmen, and we’re shaking things up, because we’re sick of no one else standing up to you, and we’re sick of the school brushing everything else under the rug in favor of the football team. We’re done with that. I’m sorry if that fucking  _ scares you. _ ” 

Ragh laughs. “You don’t scare me. What have you got? You? The Ball? Your little gang of weirdos?” 

“And me.”

See, there was a second there when Kristen had thought she’d just have to take a swing at this dude. But it turns out she doesn’t have to, because she and Ragh look over and there’s Fabian Seacaster, in all his letter-jacket, wide-shouldered glory. There’s more hesitation in his eyes than Kristen has ever seen, and their band is a pretty hesitant group. But he’s there. Fabian Seacaster is associating himself with her, and with the rest of them. Kristen genuinely thought she’d never live to see the day. 

“You’re… you’re…”

“I’m in the band,” says Fabian. 

Kristen feels as though her band is going to explode. 

Coach Daybreak marches over, and Kristen almost explodes for a whole other reason. Where was he before? Her family knows him from church. At the beginning of the year, Kristen absolutely would have trusted him to intervene. But he’s let her down, just like everything else from before high school has. “What is going on here.” 

“Well, see, Coach, I was just getting a snack, and these here freshmen started confronting me,” Ragh explains. He says the word  _ confronting _ like he’s not sure what it means, but Penelope and Sam nod to back him up. 

“Kristen, Kristen, Kristen.” Daybreak shakes his head. “I never would have pegged you for a bad kid. And you’re not a bad kid, Kristen, but this group of yours-”

“No,” says Kristen. “I am a bad kid. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m a bad kid, Fabian’s a bad kid, we’re all bad kids, if standing up for ourselves when no one else will makes us bad.” 

Daybreak gives her, and just her, a detention. 

But the other freshmen - and some of the upperclassmen, even - start to look at her like she’s cool. They call her and the others the Bad Kids. It feels like a badge of honor. 

And their band finally has a name. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up next: the boys grapple with some toxic masculinity


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you've grown into the man i knew you'd be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary lyric from [elias](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCm4ktd9to4&ab_channel=SchoolofSevenBells) by school of seven bells 
> 
> cw for this chapter for fabian's parents being, well, fabian's parents. it's vague, but it's there.

**Gorgug**

Somehow, they’ve become more approachable. People actually talk to him now, which is weird. It also makes it hard for him to convince himself that he’s fine not talking to people sometimes, and that people don’t talk to him because they’re scared of him. 

Maybe he isn’t as intimidating as he’d always thought he was, or maybe he  _ used _ to be and just isn’t anymore. He doesn’t know how to feel about that. 

Mostly, though, Gorgug still tries to hide himself in class and the hallways. He’s not used to multiple people coming up to him like this, and he doesn’t know how to talk to other people, really. They know him as “the guy who threw Ragh into the lockers” and “the guy who’s in the band that gave Coach Daybreak a piece of their minds”, and they expect him to be cool. But he never knows what’s the right thing to say; he always leaves those conversations feeling awkward, like he’s messed something up and doesn’t know what it is. 

He feels like that with the band sometimes, too. The Bad Kids. They’ll all be talking and he’ll say something and they’ll look at him like he’s speaking a foreign language, and it sucks and it always makes him feel like shit for the next couple days after, but they keep him around anyway, so that feeling fades with time. 

His sweatshirt is soft, and too big for him, and black, and has a hood and deep pockets, and it’s also the only thing he knows about his birth parents, besides that one of them was an orc and one of them was a human. His mom and dad told him when he was little that his birth parents had wrapped him in that sweatshirt before they handed him over. He’s not sure if he entirely believes that, anymore, but sometimes when he’s feeling  _ really _ bad about himself he’ll pull the sweatshirt tighter around himself and imagine that it’s true. It’s like how sometimes he’ll look at his teachers and wonder what it would be like if they were his dad, or something. Maybe that’s a little weird. (Maybe it’s a  _ lot _ weird.) But he does it anyway. 

Sometimes, Gorgug gets so distracted by thinking about things that he walks into walls. It’s Friday and classes are over, and so many people are desperate to get to their lockers and out the door that they aren’t watching where they’re going as much as usual, so he’s buffeted into first a wall and then to the side into some lockers. He blinks, trying to become present again, and looks around. It doesn’t  _ look _ like something that happened on purpose. 

His playlist comes to a halt, and he takes out his crystal to hit the repeat button - really, he should have it set to repeat all the time, but sometimes he changes it and forgets to change it back - but at that moment he hears someone talking. 

“Um. Hi?” 

He’s not sure if the person is talking to  _ him _ , though, so he pulls his headphones down to around his neck and looks around, trying to track the voice. 

“It’s… sorry… Gorgug, right?”

It’s a tiny satyr girl. Gorgug recognizes her. Her locker is next to his own, and the day he’d hit Ragh back she’d been in the hallway. She’d looked scared. 

“Yeah, I’m Gorgug,” he says. “...Hi?”

“Hi.” 

They stand there looking at each other for a second. Gorgug’s eyes fall on where her hair parts, usually a safe spot to look when he’s not looking someone in the eye but wants them to  _ think _ he is. 

“Listen, I’m sorry if - the other day, with Ragh - did I, like - I’m sorry if I scared you,” he gets out finally. 

“No, you weren’t scary!” the satyr girl rushes to correct him. “I thought… I just wanted to tell you that I thought it was kinda awesome.” 

_ Awesome _ . 

The satyr girl is kind of pretty, Gorgug realizes, very quickly. Her hair swoops over one side of her face that makes it look like she’s trying to hide, and she’s wearing a big sweatshirt too, although hers is green. 

Gorgug looks at her and he sees someone kind of like him. Who thinks he’s awesome and someone worth looking up to. 

“I’m sorry, maybe I’m supposed to already know this,” he says to her. “But what’s your name?”

She’s totally already told him at some point, maybe they share a class and he just doesn’t know and she might be mad at him for not knowing. He can feel the blood rushing to his face. 

“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry!” she answers. She’s blushing too. “I’m Zelda. Zelda Donovan. I’m so sorry! I should have - ugh.” Zelda looks away and starts moving as if to leave, but Gorgug somehow finds it in himself to keep talking. 

“I’m Gorgug!” he says. “Wait, I. You know that.” She turns back to him, and their eyes catch for just a second, and then they both look away, but he hears her laughing. “I’ll, uh. I’ll see you around, Zelda.” 

She looks happy about that.

Gorgug’s looking forward to Monday, when he’ll see her at the lockers. 

* * *

**Fabian**

Fabian hates football.

Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of the great Bill Seacaster, hates football. 

At least he does now, because Coach Daybreak has been frosty with him ever since he’d stood by Kristen and Riz in the cafeteria, because the other guys on the team have been giving him weird looks since he publicly associated himself with the people who’d dared stand up to Ragh - and, by extension, Dayne, football captain and undisputed king of the school. 

They can’t exactly kick him off the team for this, but Fabian has been spending a lot of time warming the bench. More than anyone else, he notices, after this has been going on for a couple weeks. It’s getting to mid-November and Ice Ball is in a month. He isn’t sure how much longer he can spend coming here after school and sitting on the bench and  _ watching _ . 

On the other hand, though, it does mean he’s enjoying band practice more and more. They’re starting to become more comfortable around each other. Gorgug talks more than he used to, Kristen came out to all of them last week, Adaine’s started slipping curse words in every other sentence (which really amuses Fabian), they’d all had the pleasure of meeting Riz’s mom once. And Fig… well, as much as she hates to admit it, she’s a big sap, and she’s been talking their ears off about her family drama since after their first real practice. 

It still feels like they’re holding him at arms’ length, but Fabian can’t exactly fault them for that. He’d taken so long to stand with them, he’d spent so long trying to maintain his popularity. And he hasn’t really opened up to them yet. Hard to do that in his own home, in the music room filled with so much breakable stuff. Fabian isn’t even sure he’d know how to open up to them, if he were ever to try. 

But it’s better than the football team. 

No one looks him in the eye as they leave. He changes - no point in having changed in the first place, though, not as if he’d gotten any play time - and gets on his bike and heads home. 

His dad comes down late to dinner and asks him how football’s going and Fabian lies and says it’s going well. His dad doesn’t know about the band. Fabian’s just lucky that his one day off from football practice coordinates with the night his dad goes out drinking with his friends. (Who is Fabian kidding, that’s most nights.) His mom is distant. As usual. She leaves once his dad comes down to go to her sensory deprivation egg, like always. He smiles at Cathilda, but it’s tight and drawn, and he goes upstairs even earlier than usual. 

He lies awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. 

Sleep isn’t restful. 

Fabian dreams about the band, the five others onstage somewhere, performing without him. 

Fabian dreams about the entire football team rushing at him like  _ he _ ’s the ball. 

Fabian dreams about his mother going into her egg and not coming out. 

Fabian dreams about walking through life and nobody seeing him. Invisible. Intangible. A ghost. 

Fabian dreams about his father. 

He dreams he’s on a pirate ship. His father is a tornado of whirling swords. Cathilda is there, too, for some reason, and his mother, and they’re all fighting people, and Fabian’s standing there, stuck, useless, like he had been in the hallways for too long. 

“Fabian! My darling boy!” His father looks like he’s disintegrating before Fabian’s eyes. Like he’s injured or about to fall to pieces. “You must take up my mantle, son. Take my sword.” He offers it, but Fabian can’t move. 

He tries to say,  _ I can’t _ , but no sound comes out. 

His father calls him a disappointment. 

“You’ve got to be the best, son! Do me proud! Write your name on the face of the world, just as I have!” 

A tornado spins, just at the edge of his vision. It whirls towards him and threatens to send them all overboard. The boat rocks beneath him. Or maybe it’s the whole ocean, or maybe it’s the whole world. 

Words jump up, physical block-letter manifestations.  _ Be like me. Be me. _ They box him in until he can’t breathe. 

When the box is gone, he’s a king. He’s a king and he feels… light, unsteady, like there’s something inside him making him float. He rules over a kingdom and has a wife that looks… almost like Adaine, but maybe it’s just because Adaine looks a little like his mother when he catches one or both of them in the right light. They do not talk. Ever. He calls the shots, and he always makes the right call, because if he ever lets himself think otherwise he  _ will _ crumble. Sometimes, the right call is to hurt a lot of people. Sometimes it’s to leave people behind. Sometimes, it’s to take a look at his son, who he has, because - is this real? - well - and tell him that he has to be just like him, to be the next Seacaster man in the great dynasty - 

Fabian dreams about the band shutting him out of his own house. 

Fabian dreams about Cathilda turning her back on him. 

Fabian dreams about being Dayne Blade, for some reason, and directing all the other football players, and he’s a senior and he’s being crowned prom king, and there’s some freshman on the football team shaking things up and now he can’t have that, can he. 

And Fabian Seacaster wakes up with a gasp, heart beating faster than it does even after the most rousing of football practices, and he takes a moment to realize that he is awake and he is alright and then everything that he’d dreamed about just  _ hits him _ and suddenly he’s blinking tears out of his eyes. 

His bed has a canopy. It’s one of those things that he’d thought was cool and fancy last year and asked for, knowing he would get it and not quite understanding that he’d get sick of it after two months, but he hasn’t yet gotten around to taking it down. It’s deep red and made of velvet or something else fancy. His bedposts are tall and ornate and carved, little patterns spiraling down the sides. His mattress is soft and expensive and top-of-the-line. His bedsheets were, probably, handmade, but he’s never thought to find out for sure. 

Out of all the teenagers in Elmville, Fabian maybe has the most luxurious bedroom, but it doesn’t feel like his. He doesn’t feel like he can sleep here. 

He gets up and goes to find Cathilda. 

His parents have always been the way they are, so Fabian was for the most part raised by his maid. As a kid, when he had nightmares, he’d go to Cathilda’s room instead of his parents’. She lived in a small apartment down the hall from his room - she had her own bathroom and a tiny little kitchen and a bedroom and some other things. She usually left her door unlocked. 

Fabian just has to hope now, years later, that she does the same. 

He knows how to be quiet walking the hallways. He knows where the wood of the floors has settled and where it will creak. He knows just where to step. 

It’s polite to knock. This is not something Fabian had known as a kid. But he knows it now. Better to knock on someone’s door than scare them by having them wake up with their face inches from yours. 

Fabian knocks. Fabian waits. 

It feels like an eon, an eon where he contemplates just turning back and going to his room to deal with this like the man that he is, he’s fourteen now, too old to be seeking comfort after something as silly as a bad dream, but he’s frozen. He’s stuck. 

When Cathilda answers the door, she’s in a fluffy bathrobe and slippers. Her hair is wet, like she’s just gotten out of the shower, and her eyebrows are drawn together in concern. 

“Why, young master Fabian, what-” 

And that’s all Cathilda can say before Fabian bursts into tears. 

Cathilda is significantly shorter than Fabian, but when she hugs him it’s warm and it’s comforting and it’s enough. 

He doesn’t really appreciate her enough, he thinks. At some point, he’d grown out of thinking of her as a second mother (or a first mother, really), and grown into thinking of her as just the maid. Funny, that all it’s taken for him to realize this is one night, one night he could have stayed in his room and tried to deal with it himself. 

Fabian is ashamed of himself, for that. 

Cathilda leads him into her living room and sits him down on the couch that is too big for him because it’s halfling-sized and tells him to tell her everything, and he does. He tells her about detention, about the band, about football. About punching Gorgug, about standing frozen in the lunchroom for too long, about making maybe one of the bravest decisions of his life. Cathilda knows about the band, on some level, because they’ve met her a couple times, she offered them kippers once and then he’d had to explain to them what kippers were, but she doesn’t know the how or why of it. She knows Fabian has friends over and they play music but that’s about all. 

She reacts in all the right ways, humming and nodding in the right places, attentive. His parents would never do this for him, he realizes - well, it’s something Fabian has known for a while, but some things you don’t let yourself name until too-early in the morning. 

He talks about how he’s worried they just stay friends with him because he’s convenient, because his house is a nice place to practice. Cathilda assures him that his wealth is probably their least favorite thing about him, and that if they had wanted to drop him, they’d drop him. It stings a little, but it soothes more. 

“Yes, you were mean,” she tells him. “Yes, you stood by for far too long. Yes, they practice here. But they seem like a strong-willed and resourceful group of young people. Do you believe that they wouldn’t find another place to practice? They trusted you, whether they knew it or not.” 

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Fabian says, instead of really responding to her. It’s on his mind. He worries he burdens her. It seems she had just been about to go to sleep, before he’d knocked. 

“You’re not bothering me, young master Fabian,” reassures Cathilda. “Never. I never told my children they were a bother and I won’t say it to you.” 

He blinks. “You had kids?” 

“They passed before I came to work here,” she explains. “It’s been a long time. If anything, you are just as much one of them, now.” 

Fabian Seacaster lets his head fall to his hands that he might cry again, as Cathilda sings him the halfling lullabies he remembers from some dusty corner of his early childhood, as the sun, slowly, begins to rise. A new day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok first off some good news: guess who has actually managed to work on this story since i last posted! me! yes it was only 400 words yes i'm proud of myself anyway. 
> 
> i'm very fond of my particular headcanon wrt gorgug's sweatshirt, and that section was my way of throwing in the "are you my dad" stuff without actually making him say "are you my dad" every other chapter because i simply did not want to write that. so. 
> 
> up next: fun with formatting! also, a confrontation.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tell me if there is any sense to this time, to my useless wandering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary from [la mia citta](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si9K0ChHzDI&ab_channel=EurovisionSongContest) by emma marrone
> 
> cws for this chapter: adaine's parents being adaine's parents, underage drinking 
> 
> also in fig's section i play with the formatting and do some fun line breaks and lapslock and stuff and i just want to make sure everyone knows that was intentional lol

**Fig**

Just-Fig slams the door shut. 

Her mom still won’t tell her where her dad is. Her mom still keeps telling her that this band thing is stupid and a distraction. 

Being at home has mostly meant a lot of yelling, for Fig. 

Is it weird that the band thing has become more than an activity for her? It’s become a crusade, almost, about the funding for extracurriculars that aren’t football, about the administration’s determination to protect the jocks but not the people they bully, about Dayne and Ragh and Penelope being mean to  _ everyone _ , even their own friends. 

And it’s about these five other people who seem to  _ get _ Fig and her anger and her weird issues with her past self and her mom and Gilear and her mysterious dad better than anyone else she used to be friends with, before. 

Just-Fig loves fierce. She doesn’t love her mom, because her mom lied. She doesn’t love Gilear, because he has no relation to her. But she loves her band. She loves Kristen and Adaine, who know just what it’s like to have your entire worldview pulled out from under them. She loves Gorgug, even as he’s scared of the same anger that Fig and the other girls hold so dear. She loves Riz and his stupid oboe and his weird intuition. She even loves Fabian, who gave up popularity for them, eventually. 

For a moment, she wants to just sit on her doorstep and stew, but her mom might come out and try and talk to her, and besides, Fig has so much energy inside her right now from how furious she is. She needs to  _ move _ . 

So she walks. Sometimes when this happens she’ll forget to put on shoes and will walk in her socks down to the end of the street and then turn back, but this time Fig had remembered her jacket and her boots. Her platforms slam down against the pavement and she keeps moving forward, to the end of the street, turning the corner, heading off down the hill towards the town center. It’s kind of a far walk, and her feet hurt and she’s out of breath by the time she sees the police station. It’s the last place she really wants to sit down, but she’s tired, so she sits down on the curb in front of it anyway. 

The street bustles around her. People walk in and out of the station, in and out of their cars, in and out of the stores across the street. Fig keeps listening to that bass line. It’s starting to reach dusk. Dusk on a Thursday, just-Fig has school tomorrow and she’s angry. 

Sitting in front of the station makes her think about Riz’s mom. He says she’d used to be a detective there before leaving last year to go to night classes at law school. Riz hasn’t mentioned what exactly his mom does during the days now, but Fig knows he’s said she  _ has _ a job. She knows that his mom isn’t exactly home a lot and whatever she does now pays less than the police but she doesn’t act like she minds, and she knows that no matter what Riz’s mom is always up front with him, even if it’s about something that sucks. 

Fig will never not be angry that her mom refuses to tell her her dad’s name. She wants more than the pictures. 

Next to her, someone walks out of the police station. A big guy, a demon, reddish brown with bright green eyes. 

Wait… 

No. Absolutely im-fucking-possible. 

Fig stands up

yanks the earbuds out of her ears

walks over 

“hi i’m sorry i know this sounds weird 

but did you ever” he turns 

“date a woman named sandra lynn” and he looks taken aback 

“my name is fig and i’m her daughter” 

and he looks at her again and takes her in

“sandra lynn…” he says

and then “you must be fig” and she says 

“i’m fig”

and maybe she starts to cry a little bit

but she’d never admit that to anyone.

Some moments stretch out forever and this is one of them. 

Fig asks, “are you my dad?” 

And the demon says, “I guess I am,” and then, “do you need a ride home?”

Her dad’s name is Gorthalax the Insatiable and he drives this huge fucking car and he won’t tell her why he was in the police station but that’s fine, he doesn’t get a chance to anyway, because Fig talks, she talks about her mom not telling her anything and her horns growing in and Gilear moving out and the divorce and her band and her friends and how they’re gonna play Ice Ball and maybe upend the entire social order in the process and she’s dead set on playing prom if Ice Ball goes well and her friends are great and oh god they’re at her house now and she doesn’t want to get out of the car. 

“Fig.” Gorthalax says. “You’re allowed to be mad at your mom. I don’t feel right about it, but… you’re allowed to feel the way you do.” 

“Good,” mutters Fig, glaring out the window at her house. 

“But I do want to ask one thing of you.”

“What?”

“Go easy on Gilear, will you?” 

She just looks at him. 

“He didn’t know. And I didn’t know your mom was married. He’s… the way you make it sound, he’s having just as hard a time with this as you are. Maybe he didn’t contribute your genes, but your mom’s right. He did raise you.” 

Fig sighs. “Yeah. I guess. I’m trying to. It’s just…” She looks Gorthalax in the eye. “He only ever eats yogurt. Kind of hard for me to respect him when he has Chobani stains all over his shirt. Even at work - at school.”

He laughs. “Maybe he just needs someone else around, Fig. Go over to his apartment. If you eat something that’s not yogurt, so will he.” 

Fig thinks about that. “Yeah. Maybe.” 

She’s gonna have to get out of the car eventually. 

Fig’s mom is standing at the door, leaning against the doorway, looking stunned. When she sees Fig, she takes a deep breath. When she sees Gorthalax, she doesn’t  _ look _ surprised, at least not that Fig can see. 

She opens the car door, steps out, closes the car door, smiles at Gorthalax, who’d given her his phone number. She walks up to the house, up the front steps. 

She expects her mom to yell at her, but instead, she’s pulled into a hug. This startles Fig, for some reason. 

She doesn’t hate it as much as she thought she would.

* * *

**Kristen**

The first Monday in December Kristen Applebees opens her locker and a book falls out. 

It’s called  _ On the Subject of World Religions _ , and it’s heavy and hardcover and at least three inches thick. When she picks it up from off the floor, it falls open in her hands, the pages glossy and full of colorful illustrations. She flips to the first couple pages. The table of contents lists pantheons she knows and some she’s never even heard of. 

“So.” Kristen hears a slight metallic noise as Gorgug leans against the locker next to her. “You got something too.” 

“What?” She looks up at him, mystified. 

“Fig found a red guitar pick in her locker, she said, when I saw her earlier. I have a… this wallet.” Gorgug waves it at her. It’s nice, black and smooth, and has a little flower embossed on it. 

“And I have this book,” Kristen says. Gorgug nods. “Well, I guess maybe we should go see if anyone else got anything?” 

The others had indeed gotten things. Adaine approaches them, mystified by the gift card to one of the nicest stores in town, and a crystal a couple years out of date. Funny - a week ago, or maybe two, she’d mentioned how her parents had hidden most of her clothes, she’d mentioned how she wasn’t allowed a crystal because she hadn’t made it into Hudol. The crystal is older and clunky and it takes Kristen and Gorgug and Riz and Adaine put together to figure out all the functions on it but eventually they manage to add everyone’s contacts and create a group chat with all six of them in it. 

Riz shows up with a new briefcase. His old one had started rusting at the hinges and some of the coating was starting to flake off. This new one has Riz’s name written in a shimmery gold color along the top.

Fabian approaches holding a small box that he says contains polish for his motorcycle. He rides the thing to school most days and talks about it like it’s the seventh member of the band. Kristen is mystified by someone her age having a motorcycle and just driving it around places, but whatever floats Fabian’s boat. 

At lunch, the six of them try and figure out who’d given them the stuff. At first, Riz guesses it’s Fig, because she had found all of their lockers to put notes on after that fateful detention, but she swears it wasn’t her, and then Riz changes his mind after not-so-secretly watching her for five minutes. Adaine thinks maybe it’s Fabian, but Gorgug points out that Fabian probably would have told them that the gifts were from him, or at least left a hint. Eventually they have to split to go to class, and they still haven’t figured it out. 

Kristen spends all of art class reading the world religions book under the table. At one point, she looks up, and sees Gorgug watching her. Both of them have to stifle a laugh. 

* * *

**Adaine**

Adaine had never thought she’d be the kind of high schooler to sneak out and go to a party, but here she is anyway. Ostentatia Wallace is a not-uncool sophomore with doting parents and a big house, and she’s having a house party, the last big one for the underclassmen before Ice Ball and then winter break, and the band has been invited. Adaine thinks that in theory they’re supposed to be playing, but actually what’s happening is that Fig and Gorgug are playing and the rest of them are just milling around. Kristen has a red plastic cup that she keeps refilling… that she’s  _ been _ refilling for the past hour they’ve been here, and Adaine is honestly getting a little concerned. She’s lost track of Fabian. Last she’d seen Riz, he’d been talking enthusiastically with a senior friend of Ostentatia’s who she thinks he probably knew beforehand. She herself is perched on the side of a couch, nibbling a handful of potato chips and not really talking to anyone. 

She’d snuck out to be here. Which, given, Adaine is no stranger to sneaking around her parents, but she’s never snuck out of the house. Most of her sneaking around is sneaking from school to Fabian’s or from school to Basrar’s to write with Kristen and Fig and then slipping into the house without her parents noticing that she’s later than she’s supposed to be. 

“Miss Abernant. Hello.” The guy who’s just approached her is named Percival, and she vaguely remembers him from Hudol. There’s a couple Hudol guys at this party, and Adaine can tell who they are because they look even more out of place than Adaine feels. And also because she remembers them from middle school. 

Adaine remains silent and eats another potato chip.  _ These are good _ , she thinks.

“You look lovely as always. What have you brought for us tonight?”

“I’m sorry?” she asks, mystified. 

Percival seems equally confused. “But whenever you come to parties, miss Abernant, you always bring some elvish wine from your parents’...” 

He seems to come to the realization that he is not talking to Aelwyn at the same time that Adaine registers the implications of that comment. 

Percival tries to move away, but Adaine reaches out and grabs him by the tie, dropping the rest of her chips onto Ostentatia’s living room carpet in the process. He’s wearing his Hudol uniform to this party. Ridiculous. 

“Was she supposed to be here tonight?” Adaine’s voice is low and murderous, and Percival looks scared. 

“I-”

“Tell me.” She glares. She grits her teeth. Surely she looks every bit the monster her parents tell her she is when she isn’t bitingly polite. It’s fine. She’s  _ trying _ to scare him. 

“Yes! Yes, she always brings something to drink!” 

Adaine swears, not in Common or Elvish but a string of words she’s picked up from Riz. Her  _ fucking _ sister. She’s going to kill her. 

For so long, her parents had held Aelwyn up as the perfect child, everything Adaine wasn’t and should be. Aelwyn didn’t have to study. Aelwyn was always polite. Aelwyn followed every rule. 

Fuck that. Aelwyn isn’t perfect, Aelwyn is stealing her parents’ wine and going to parties with Hudol boys. Adaine knows there’s no universe where Aelwyn will get in huge trouble for this, but it’s worth a shot, and honestly Adaine just wants to see the look on her sister’s face when she knows she’s caught. 

Adaine pulls her crystal out of her pocket with her free hand and brings up the recording app. “Say that again,” she orders Percival. 

“I - I - Yes! Fine! Aelwyn Abernant brings elvish wine from her parents’ liquor cabinet to our parties! She was supposed to come tonight but I can’t find her!” 

And with that, Adaine has proof. She releases Percival, who scurries off, looking terrified. Good. 

That’s the moment that Adaine’s crystal lights up. It’s a text from Riz, to their band group chat. A picture and some frantic text. 

_ help fabian is with a girl in ostentatia’s parents’ room we should??? get him out??? i am hiding please send backup this is awful.  _

The image is Fabian, passionately kissing Adaine’s sister. 

Adaine is a woman on a warpath. She thunders up the staircase, wrenching every door open - she doesn’t know which room is which. Adaine finds, in order: a guy in the bathroom, thankfully just throwing up in the toilet and fully clothed; two of Ostentatia’s sophomore friends, making out on Ostentatia’s bed; another Hudol student, very drunk, in the other bathroom; a closet, empty; and, finally, behind the last door in the hallway, Fabian and Aelwyn with their hands all over each other. 

“Gotcha,” says Adaine, as the two of them spring apart. 

“Adaine?” Fabian asks. “What… what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

“That’s my sister, Fabian,” she informs him bitingly. 

His eyes go wide. “Oh.” 

“Fancy meeting you here, little sister,” Aelwyn greets her, a catty smile sneaking across her face, as she gets up from Ostentatia’s parents’ bed. 

“I know what you’ve been doing.” 

“Oh?” Her sister’s eyebrows go up. She looks so cool, and calm, and collected. Adaine wants to murder her. 

“Stealing our parents’ wine? I have proof. I talked to the Hudol boys downstairs.” She waves her crystal in Aelwyn’s direction. 

“If your  _ proof _ is on that crystal,” Aelwyn smirks, “good look convincing Mum and Dad of anything. You’re not supposed to have a crystal.” 

“I can email it.” Adaine is trying her best to remain even-keeled, but it’s hard. Half of her wants to lunge at Aelwyn and end this all for good. The other half desperately wants to cry at the very thought of standing up to her sister.

She and Aelwyn’s eyes are locked, and the tension between them is electric, sizzling. Adaine will not be the first to break. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Fabian getting off the bed and backing up against the wall. Behind her, she’s dimly aware of Kristen stumbling into the room. She has no idea where Riz is but she knows he’s in here somewhere. Under her feet, she feels the vibrations of Fig and Gorgug’s song downstairs. Aelwyn is outnumbered, here. She’s not winning this time. 

“They’ll never believe you.” 

Adaine doesn’t care. 

“I  _ am _ better than you, Aelwyn.” Her voice is low, and it’s cutting, and it’s furious. “They spoil you. Someday you’re going to move out and you’re not going to know what to do with yourself. Yeah, maybe I don’t go to Hudol and maybe my grades aren’t perfect and maybe I have panic attacks but you know what? That’s fine! Because my friends love me, and I know they’re going to stand by me, and sure, they aren’t the friends our parents want for me, but they  _ care _ .” 

Behind her, Kristen says something incoherent about how much she loves Adaine. 

“See?” she continues. “Listen to that!” 

Aelwyn has the audacity to laugh. “I know about your band, Adaine. I know all about the little shake-up you’re planning at Aguefort.”

“That’s fine.” 

“The power of friendship can’t solve everything.” 

“Fuck you!” She yells it. 

“Have your words failed you, Adaine?”

“Fuck you.” When she says it again, she can barely get the words out. 

Her sister doesn’t seem off-balance at all. Never mind that Adaine’s whole world has been pulled out from under her from the adrenaline of this confrontation. They’ve argued before, but this is the most Adaine’s been able to hold her ground without falling to pieces. 

She can do this. She just needs to hold a little while longer. She refuses to break while Aelwyn’s still in the room. There’s no way she can win the war against her sister, but she can win this battle, as long as she keeps herself together. Aelwyn will  _ not _ see her fully lose control. Not now. 

“Good luck with… everything, Adaine.” Aelwyn shakes her head as she moves towards the door. “I must go. Our parents would never check my room, of course, but it would be wise of me to show my face before it gets too late. I’d advise you to head home, too. The earlier you return, the less angry they’ll be when I tell them you’ve snuck out.” 

This is  _ not what parents are supposed to do _ . They are not supposed to favor one daughter over the other so blatantly. Something - panic or anger, both really - swells up inside Adaine. They’re just like the school administration, who let people like Dayne and Ragh get away with everything. It’s all the same fight, really. 

Adaine flies at Aelwyn as she opens the door, grabs her wrist, but Aelwyn shakes her off easily. She tries to get out of the room, to follow her down the stairs, she can’t let her get away with this, she absolutely cannot, but then Fabian holds her back, and she tries to squirm out and she starts yelling obscenities at him, at Aelwyn, at everyone, and oh god what is Aelwyn going to say to her parents, she can’t get in huge trouble with them now, not with Ice Ball next week, but fuck them honestly, they can’t stop her, but even if they can or can’t it’s a question of whether they should. 

Her family has been dangling perfection over her head for as long as Adaine can remember, making it unattainable and imperative, and that is  _ not what family is supposed to do _ . 

It’s a little easier, knowing Aelwyn isn’t actually as straightlaced as her parents would have her believe. It’s a little easier, knowing her parents are the same kind of enemy as the ones the Bad Kids are determined to take down. 

She knows that, later, she will have to reckon with her parents, face the consequences of sneaking out and confronting Aelwyn. She knows she will find a way to show them that recording without revealing her secret crystal, and she knows that they won’t believe her. She knows she will go upstairs after, and sit and stew in her bedroom, taking comfort in the tee shirts and jeans gifted her by the rest of the band that she stuffs into her backpack each morning and changes into before first period. 

She knows that things will be hard, later. 

But now, Adaine allows herself to cry, held by Kristen and Fabian and, after a moment, Riz. Adaine allows herself to be lulled by the song she’d written drifting up from the floor below. For just this moment, it’s easy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will be honest i am not very proud of this chapter. like, at all. this chapter is one where i was just frantically trying to align the two canons together, speedrun character development, and drop plot threads that i never pick up again. so, like. 
> 
> up next: the winter dance. or, fate.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let your heart take a beating, let it pound to the rhythm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter where sometimes pov sections are 300 words and that's okay because that's how the book did it
> 
> lyric from [we got the power](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8vNdFzO_fY) by loreen

**Tracker**

For the first ten minutes Tracker’s at the dance, she’s just worried people will figure out that she’s not actually an Aguefort student. She’s been homeschooling herself ever since moving in with her uncle, but she’d always wanted to go to a school dance, so when she found out that her uncle would have to chaperone, she’d pestered him into allowing her to go. 

Eventually, though, it hits her that Aguefort is a pretty big school. There are enough students that they probably wouldn’t recognize each other, let alone realize that she doesn’t go there. So Tracker lets herself relax a little. She’s wearing a suit, simple, black jacket and pants, white shirt, and a thin blue tie, and she feels great. The dance is in the Aguefort gym, but it’s pretty well-decorated; someone has hung silvery snowflakes from the ceiling and covered the bleachers in what’s probably wrapping paper. There’s an arch for pictures and a small stage at the far end for the band. Or, well, bands. Her uncle had told her all about this ongoing saga with the bands here. 

Tracker was one of the first people to get here, and she’d looked on as both bands had their sound checks. There isn’t any music playing now - the dance technically started half an hour ago, but she figures the bands are waiting for more people to show. 

She thinks maybe she should talk to people. She’d made small talk with Antiope, another teacher’s kid, for a bit at the beginning, but then one of Antiope’s friends had shown up and she’d wandered off. 

There’s a redhead standing near the stage that Tracker recognizes as being in one of the bands. Even in the dim light, she can see the freckles clear and stark on the other girl’s face. Her hair is up in a plain high ponytail, and she’s wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Even if Tracker hadn’t recognized her from earlier, it would have been clear that this girl is one of the performers. 

The redhead’s jeans are ripped and they look just a bit too big. The tee shirt looks  _ way _ too big, in a way that Tracker would guess is on purpose. 

It’s worth saying that Tracker dresses similarly when she’s not dolled up for a dance at a school she doesn’t go to. 

She approaches the redhead. “Hey,” she says, and it doesn’t feel like nearly enough. 

The redhead startles. “Oh! Hi.” When she sees Tracker, she smiles, slowly, in a way that takes up her whole face. “I’m Kristen. Have we met?” 

“I don’t think so,” Tracker says, which feels sort of like lying, because no, of course they haven’t met, Tracker doesn’t go here. “I’m Tracker.” 

“Nice to, uh, nice to meet you,” Kristen responds. If Tracker had to guess, she’d say Kristen is probably blushing, but she can’t be sure because the lighting in this gym is so terrible. And then Kristen blurts out, “you look really nice,” and then Kristen  _ definitely _ blushes, and she looks like she’s about to stop apologizing. 

“Thanks,” Tracker jumps in before Kristen has a chance to talk. “You look great too.”

Kristen looks down at her clothes. “Thanks, I guess? These aren’t even mine. They’re Fig’s. We decided that maybe church camp shirts weren’t the right vibe for this.” 

Tracker laughs. “Probably, yeah.” 

“Also, I don’t even know if I want to wear church camp shirts anymore…” Kristen adds on, talking more to herself than to Tracker. And, look, Tracker is a lot of things and one of those things is perceptive. Tracker grew up in the church, and she left it because she was gay, and she sees a lot of who she was last year in Kristen, somehow. The panic on her face when she’d called Tracker pretty, the need to distance herself from the church out loud. 

She reaches over and grabs Kristen’s hand. Kristen’s eyes go wide, but then she starts smiling again. 

“So, listen-” Tracker starts. But she’s interrupted. A tiny green dude in an incredibly tacky suit runs up to them, grabs Kristen’s other hand, and hisses something urgent into her ear that Tracker can’t make out. 

“I’m so sorry,” Kristen tells her, genuinely looking upset. “But I’ve gotta go. I’ll find you later, okay?” 

She’d better. 

* * *

**Penny**

Listen, Penny Luckstone knows it’s wrong to eavesdrop, but she also knows that leaving the bathroom stall right now  _ will _ make everything much worse. 

There’s someone hyperventilating out by the sinks. 

“Adaine?” asks someone else, who Penny thinks is maybe Fig Faeth - oh, dear, this is bad. Riz had told Penny all about the band at Ostentatia’s party the other day. If lead vocalist Adaine Abernant is the person near tears, that’s not good. “Adaine, I’m just gonna sit down next to you, okay?” 

“Okay,” Adaine says breathlessly. “Sure.” 

“You’re okay, Adaine,” Fig tells her, sounding helpless. “I know we’re all nervous, but everything’s gonna be fine.” 

Adaine makes a noise that implies that she doesn’t really believe Fig. 

Another voice. “I got them.” 

Oh, and Penny knows this voice. This is Riz Gukgak. He is in the girls’ bathroom. Never knows when to leave well enough alone, that kid - she lets herself smile, in the privacy of the stall. She’d babysat him for four years, since  _ she _ was a freshman. He’s a good egg. Even if he is in the womens’ bathroom. 

“Oh, Adaine.” Kristen Applebees, if Penny’s guessing right. “You guys - get in here.” 

More footsteps, and some blustering from Fabian Seacaster about “I’m not going in the  _ girls’ bathroom _ , Kristen, what do you think of me, really-” before Gorgug Thistlespring scolds him and, it sounds like, forcibly pulls him in. 

Now Penny really has to stifle her laughter. If they know someone else is in here, it would be incredibly awkward for the boys and terrifying for Adaine. But the situation is simply so hilarious. 

“Why am I here,” she hears Fabian mumble. “I’m useless in these situations, you know that, this is the  _ girls’ bathroom- _ ”

“It’s for emotional support, shut up,” admonishes Fig. “Adaine, what can we do for you right now?”

Adaine laughs frantically. “Not go on? But of course we can’t do that.” 

“Here - Fig, move.” That’s Gorgug, the tall kid who always looks confused. He seems like a nice enough kid, though, especially if Riz is to be believed. And a decent drummer. “Listen, Adaine, you know how bad I am at words and people. I am… also really nervous.” 

“Yeah,” responds Adaine, still sounding faint. 

“But it’s like - you said the other night, this is about your thing with your parents and your sister, too. It’s about standing up to people. Standing up  _ for _ people. I know performing is hard for you. I hate putting on a show too, maybe just as much as you, I don’t know. But you’ve got this. You… I hear you were incredible when you yelled at your sister at the party. You did that. You can do this.” 

Adaine sighs, “Thanks,” she gets out, and it sounds like she’s speaking through tears. 

“Also,” adds Kristen, “Fig can sing for you, if you don’t want to-”

“No, I can sing.” 

“You… you sure?” 

“Yeah.” Adaine exhales. “I’ll be fine. I have to be fine. Right.”

“Okay, just know you can tap out if you need to,” Gorgug reassures her, uneasily. 

Penny checks the time on her crystal. These kids were supposed to start five minutes ago. 

“This might be weird, guys, but.” Adaine sounds like she’s psyching herself up for something. “Can I maybe have a hug?” 

There’s assent, and then a whole lot of shuffling, and then some noise about “wow, Gorgug, you give really good hugs, I’m going to come find you in the hallways just for that now,” and then Gorgug making that weird noise that some people make when they’re not sure how to respond to compliments, and then it sounds like they leave. 

Penny opens the door, and goes to wash her hands. She wants to get out there as quickly as possible, and not miss any of these kids’ set. 

* * *

**Dayne**

The freshmen are running late. 

That’s the only conclusion Dayne can draw from Johnny Spells’ band coming and setting up onstage a little bit after the music is supposed to start. Dayne had seen Danielle and Sam and a couple others on the planning committee frantically rushing around, trying to find the freshmen maybe, but not for long, because Johnny Spells starts playing just a couple minutes after the music is supposed to start. 

Dayne sees a couple younger kids looking disappointed when Johnny Spells and his group start playing, but honestly, he could care less. He doesn’t see what the whole deal is with these freshmen anyway. He hasn’t even heard any of their songs. All Dayne knows is that they’re weird, that one of them doesn’t play a normal band instrument, and that the group consists of that one freshman upstart on the football team and a bunch of other outcasts. 

He sees Ragh a few people away and gives him a look. The look is supposed to convey,  _ lol those freshmen really effed up their one chance to perform _ . Ragh grins back, but the grin is maybe a little too enthusiastic. Dayne breaks eye contact. 

He finds Penelope, and they dance together for most of Johnny Spells’ set, only taking a break when Penelope needs to keep Sam from jumping up onstage to kiss her boyfriend. Penelope looks great, and it’s nice to attend a dance without the hassle of going to stand onstage and be crowned. He and Penelope will win prom king and queen easy - no sense in wasting their time on Ice Court this year. 

Johnny Spells, onstage, says something about “well, that’s our set, so if the kiddies are ready to perform…” He trails off and looks over to the side of the stage. 

The six of them are standing in a line. The tiefling girl has her arms crossed, and she’s glaring at Johnny. Fabian, the upstart on the football team, has his arm around the elven girl who Dayne’s heard is their lead singer. The other three kids just look determined. 

They can’t be  _ that _ good, can they?

* * *

**Ragh**

The first song they play is a song about longing, and a song about hiding things. Ragh knows too much about hiding things. He hides a lot of things. 

When Dayne looks at him, and Ragh smiles, and then Dayne looks away, that kind of hurts. No, it doesn’t just kind of hurt, it hurts a lot. Dayne doesn’t look at Ragh the way he looks at Penelope, and Ragh wants him to. 

The thing about Dayne is that he’s… perfect. And Ragh doesn’t know if it feels like he has to measure up but can’t, or if there’s something else going on, but he resents Penelope for getting all of Dayne’s attention. Maybe he resents Dayne a little bit too… no. He can’t. That’s impossible. 

It makes him mad, how these freshman seem to have reached inside of him and hit upon something so tender that not even Ragh himself has the words to describe. 

Fabian, the freshman on the football team, he has dreams of popularity, king-of-the-school status. He wants to take what’s Dayne’s, and Ragh simply cannot allow that to happen. Is this band supposed to be their vehicle to popularity? No way. It’s too  _ weird _ . Maybe the other freshmen, the other unpopular kids, are into it, but this band needs to win over the popular crowd if they want to succeed, and that’s just impossible. 

Ragh decides in that moment that he will take down these freshmen, whatever it takes. Freshmen can’t be allowed to become popular. It’s against the  _ rules _ . And more importantly, it’s a threat to him, to Dayne, to everything they stand for, to the football team, to what’s always been. 

He’s gonna take down these freshmen if it’s the last thing he does at this school. 

* * *

**Ostentatia**

It had been a good idea to invite those kids to her party. They make good music. 

The music is about, like, differences, and how we’re not so different after all, and standing up for what you believe in. Ostentatia likes it. It’s rhythmic and cool, and Adaine and Fig both have great voices that sound  _ especially _ great when they duet like they’re doing now. 

She really likes this dress that she’s wearing. It used to be her mom’s, but she and Katja had attacked it with some embroidery floss and taken it in some and now it looks stylish and new. She’s gotten good at reimagining her clothes since her dad lost his job. Not that Ostentatia minds at all. She’s good at it, and she enjoys it - it gives her something to think about when she’s at home. 

Also, remaking her clothes allows her to bedazzle them, so. 

She’s lost track of Katja and Antiope - her best guess is that they went to find a janitor’s closet somewhere to make out - so she just kind of dances on her own for a bit. The gym has really filled up now, making it hard to move and see through the crowds of people, but Ostentatia pushes her way through to get a little closer to the stage, because why not. 

She doesn’t make it there, though. 

After just a moment, her eyes catch on a corner next to the bleachers, almost behind them, where a couple of AV kids are fussing with the microphones, maybe recording something. Ostentatia spots a pixie whizzing around, a turtle leaning against the wall looking sullen, and… oh.  _ Oh _ . 

There is a tall aarakocra guy fiddling with some knobs. He’s not conventionally attractive, with his beak and big glasses, but he looks… nice, to Ostentatia, somehow, easy on the eyes, even in the suit that is clearly too small for him. 

Something odd is happening around Ostentatia. Kids from different cliques are hanging out, dancing together. Carie, who Ostentatia knows to be popular but only among the theatre kids, is chatting with Ostentatia’s own friend Penny, who might not be conventionally popular but is nevertheless really sweet and well-liked by most people. Zayn Darkshadow is waving his weird little rave lights at an earth elemental who Ostentatia thinks might be on the football team, and the earth elemental doesn’t actually seem to mind. Freshmen mingle with seniors, jocks with geeks, horse girls with emo guys. 

And one of the popular girls, Danielle Barkstock, has her eyes on the same aarakocra guy as Ostentatia. There’s a moment where Danielle stops looking at the AV kid and notices Ostentatia. The two of them hold fierce eye contact for a moment, before they both make a break for the AV corner. 

Ostentatia doesn’t know exactly what these kids are doing, but their music is bringing people together, and that’s good. Even if it does mean she has some competition for the fascinatingly attractive aarakocra boy. 

* * *

**Sam**

Sam hates to admit it, but the freshman band is way better than Johnny’s. She’d tried so hard to hate Fabian after she’d found out he was in the band that was taking up half of her Johnny’s performance time, but there’s something about that freshman that she finds kind of cool. He’d tried so hard to fit in with her and the others in her friend group for the first couple months. And he was actually kind of funny. 

Johnny’s band makes music for their own egos, really, or music designed to get women to throw themselves at him. Sam likes it, but it’s not what she usually listens to. (Well, it is, because she just loves Johnny’s voice so much that she plays his songs all the time, but, whatever.) The Bad Kids, though, make music that sounds like Sam’s imagination. She particularly likes the acoustic guitar elements coming from the redheaded human girl - she thinks her name is maybe Kristen? 

They look like they’re having fun up there. 

Usually, when Sam goes to Johnny’s gigs, she throws herself right up against the side of the stage and screams her heart out. She feels like she has to prove herself, to Johnny, to the throng of girls who’re attracted to his whole bad boy shtick and who might try to win him over, to drop her. And that’s fine. She loves him, she’s fine to wave her love around for everyone to see. But it’s not  _ fun _ . She always leaves their gigs exhausted, her throat raw.

The worst part is that Johnny doesn’t really mind the other girls who try to get at him. Sure, he’s loyal to Sam, but she always has some deep-seated fear that he’ll drop her for a prim Hudol girl, or someone older, closer to his age, with a real job. She knows that he’s dated other Aguefort kids before - Penny Luckstone in the year above her is one. Rumor has it that it had been a messy breakup. Sam doesn’t want a messy breakup. She’s scared of it. And she worries that if Johnny doesn’t brush off these other girls, that’s what she’s going to get. 

She doesn’t feel that pressure here, in front of these freshmen. Maybe it’s because she isn’t romantically entangled with any of them, maybe it’s because she’s above them socially and doesn’t have anything to prove, maybe it’s because they simply don’t  _ act _ like they’re expecting anything from anyone. Johnny and his band play for the audience. These kids are playing for themselves.

It’s freeing. Sam Nightingale dances for herself, without anyone else. Johnny’s still here, looking sullen against the far wall while they see all the students mingling and enjoying themselves in a way Sam isn’t sure they did during Johnny’s set. She doesn’t know if people enjoyed themselves during Johnny’s set. She was too busy trying to get at the stage, putting on her usual act. 

She doesn’t like doing that nearly as much as she likes what she’s doing now, Sam realizes. It’s nice to do something for herself and not for anyone else, to music that sounds like something she’d usually have on her crystal without the pressure from her boyfriend or Penelope to listen to a certain style. 

Dating Johnny Spells is putting her into a box, and Sam isn’t sure she likes the box. She isn’t sure that she likes the concept of being boxed into anything. Penelope’s second in command, Johnny’s cute high school girlfriend, her mother’s oldest daughter. Sam is a lot of things, and those things intersect, and she should be allowed to be all of them at once, instead of just one at a time. 

Onstage, the freshman band has finished up a song. 

“Last song of the night,” says Fig Faeth onstage. “This one goes out to everyone - everyone who’s felt boxed in by a clique…” 

* * *

**Jawbone**

“...Everyone who’s felt like they’re only one thing. Everyone who feels like they’ve been looked down on. Everyone who’s mad that certain kinds of people can get away with everything.”

Fig is playing a dangerous game. Jawbone thinks it’s a good game, but before the song’s even started, he sees Goldenhoard starting to smoke at the ears. This will be interesting to watch. 

A drumbeat starts. 

“This school - yes, Aguefort Academy itself - has a problem. A problem where it elevates one group of people above all others. What group is that, you ask? The football team.” 

Dayne Blade is starting to look angry, too. Jawbone can tell, all the way across the floor. But, conversely, some other students are getting into it. The AV kids in the corner, the theatre kids, a few that Jawbone would guess don’t belong to any clique - even his Tracker is looking excited. 

“Yeah,” Fig continues. “They get away with everything. They get all the funding, all the recognition, all the institutional support.” She starts a simple, pulsing pattern on her bass. A call to action. “We don’t think that’s quite fair.” 

Jawbone agrees with her, but he isn’t sure he’s allowed to publicly voice his distaste for the administration in front of the students. 

The other students come in. Adaine has a tambourine. Goldenhoard begins to storm up to the stage, waving his arms. Jawbone thinks he’s maybe saying something like “Shut it down!”. The students running sound ignore him. Good for them. 

The band barely gets two lines into the actual song, though, before Goldenhoard makes it to the front of the gym and pulls the plug on the sound system himself. A moment later, the lights go out. 

The fallout from this will be incredible, and Jawbone for one can’t wait to see it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who has started watching the unsleeping city and still hasn't written anything for this fic in two weeks? me! and that's fine
> 
> its fine everythings fine its all fine. really 
> 
> up next: money changes hands


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you will never remove my crown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title lyric from [roi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw7WqoSHtgU) by bilal hassani

**Riz**

Vice Principal Goldenhoard is not happy. 

They all saw this coming from a mile away, of course, but it’s still daunting to stand in the principal’s office like this - there’s only one chair, and none of them were going to be the one to sit in it - and get lectured about “inciting disobedience” and “disrespecting authority”. If there’s anything that Riz has learned from his mom’s night classes (he reads her homework sometimes), it’s that sometimes authority needs to be disrespected. 

They’re missing first period for this. 

He had come into school that morning to find a note on his locker. From a distance, he’d thought that maybe Fig was up to something again, but no. Instead, it had informed him to go to Goldenhoard’s office instead of class. 

Him and Kristen were supposed to be dissecting this morning, though, so he’s kind of glad that  _ this _ is the class he’s missing. 

Goldenhoard tells them that their “little stunt” was “irresponsible” and gives them all  _ separate _ detentions, and then, to add insult to injury, says, “I know you had aspirations of playing at prom, miss Faeth. I unfortunately cannot allow you to perform on school property or at school events again.” 

And then he dismisses them to go to second period and Fig does not even try to hide that she’s crying. 

Lunch is weird. Riz feels like maybe it  _ should _ be a somber affair - and sure, everyone’s upset - but people keep coming up to them. A couple of junior girls approach to tell Gorgug how much they liked his drumming (and that satyr girl he’s been awkwardly hovering around for the past month scurries away as soon as she sees other people talking to him). The choir kids gush about Adaine’s voice for five full minutes and everyone at their table is a little uncomfortable and a little awed. And Biz Glitterdew, the senior who’s in charge of the AV club who the six of them tolerate because Riz had tried to make friends with the AV club for a hot minute, sidles into a seat next to Adaine. Adaine makes a face and scoots closer to Gorgug. 

“So, listen,” says Biz in his usual grating, congested manner. “I probably wasn’t supposed to do this, but I put the recordings from Ice Ball up online.” 

Riz blinks at him. “O...kay…?” 

“And, y’see, they were getting clicks. So I put a price on them. A dollar per song, iTunes style.” 

Biz Glitterdew slides a stack of ten-dollar bills across the table. 

Riz is sure that his own eyes go wide. Adaine looks startled. Kristen seems almost scared. 

“I withdrew these this morning,” he informs them. 

“Oh my god,” Fig mumbles. 

“Now, see, I think it’s only fair that the AV club gets a cut,” Biz continues. “‘Cause we did the recording and the mixing and the uploading.” 

Riz nods mutely. He’s still just stunned by the fact that they made  _ at least _ sixty dollars, and that’s after Biz took some. 

Biz pulls up the website. “I can hand total control of this over to you,” Biz tells him, doing something on his phone that pulls up the source code. “You know your way around the digital realm. I trust you with it. But I will continue to expect a twenty percent cut from all sales.” 

“Yeah,” Riz agrees. He’s numb. What the fuck is this. Their weird little band, that is literally not allowed to play on school grounds anymore, is making  _ money _ ? “Yeah, sure, of course.” 

Biz tips his hat to Adaine, says “Milady” to her, and leaves. 

“Alright, so, can we agree,” Riz tells the group. “Basrar’s after detention. Will anyone’s parents lose their minds?” 

Fig doesn’t care what her parents think, Fabian and Adaine’s parents probably won’t notice if they get home later, Gorgug’s are just glad he has friends, Riz’s mom won’t be home from work until late, and Kristen just shrugs. “I’ll make something up,” she says. “I’ll say I was at chapel or something.” 

The rest of the day is equally weird. People come up to Riz in the hallways to say they liked the band. (Turns out the oboe is cool now. Take  _ that _ , middle school bullies!) Ragh, Dayne, and Penelope seem mad, but no one even tries to rough him up today. It’s like they’re frozen out of surprise. 

Riz could get used to this. 

Even in his solitary detention, Riz isn’t bored or upset or anything. He just daydreams about how much ninety-nine cents a song could get him. Daydreams about what he’s going to do with his ten dollars when they go to Basrar’s later. 

When they meet up after, they sit in the same corner booth they had the first time, in the same seating order no less, but they’re so much more comfortable with each other. Gorgug and Adaine don’t flinch into themselves; Kristen does something that Riz can only describe as manspreading, sprawling herself out between Fig and Adaine, and Fig leans into it, her head on Kristen’s shoulder. Riz himself is comfortably settled under Gorgug’s arm. They’d all ordered huge servings of ice cream, sundaes or milkshakes, with the money Biz had given them from the music sales. 

“I just. I just can’t fucking believe this,” Fig says. “What a motherfucking whirlwind of a day.”

“It’s weird,” adds Gorgug. “People actually  _ like _ me now.” 

“We already liked you,” Kristen objects. 

“Yeah, but like, you aren’t  _ people _ . I don’t know how to explain it.” 

Adaine seems to get it, though. “I’m glad we aren’t people to you.” 

“I thought my chances at popularity were fucked for a while.” Fabian brings them back to the point. “But now? I like this a lot better than being sort of popular because I did football. I don’t have to worry about impressing anyone. They’re already impressed.” 

“Good to know all you care about is popularity,” Kristen ribs him, but it’s meant with love, Riz can tell. 

God, he can’t wait to tell his mom about this. She’s already over the moon about him having close friends, but he’s  _ popular _ now, for real popular, and making money too. And he’s not even doing anything illegal. The next time he can catch her between work and class and sleeping, he’ll tell her, and he can’t wait to see the look on her face. 

“We’re kings of the school,” muses Fig as she sips her milkshake, “and we didn’t even have to bully anyone to get here.” 

“As it should be,” Adaine mutters. The others nod. 

“We really shook something up,” Gorgug says. “We might not be allowed to play at school anymore, but I think we really changed something. People aren’t gonna put up with admin’s bullshit now.” 

Fig can barely hide her glee. “We started a revolution.” 

Riz takes a bite of his sundae, which has all sorts of toppings on it and three different ice cream flavors, because so sue him he’s never been able to buy this much ice cream before so why not go all in. It had cost him eight dollars and seventeen cents and every bite so far has been worth it. 

God he can’t fucking  _ wait _ to tell his mom. 

* * *

**Adaine**

Adaine finally gets around to using her gift card during winter break, the one day that all six of them have free, to go shopping at some high-end store in the town center. The Gilded Coin is the type of place that Adaine’s family might frequent - which is to say that Riz, Kristen, Fig, and Gorgug seem exceptionally out of place here. Gorgug holds himself like he’s afraid he’s going to break something, while Kristen goes around touching everything and holding it up to herself. 

If Adaine were Aelwyn, she’d lecture them about the proper way to behave in a nice establishment such as this. Then again, if she were Aelwyn, she wouldn’t have friends like this. Adaine is not Aelwyn, so she keeps her mouth shut and takes a kind of enjoyment in watching them run around the store. 

Fabian, however, is clearly pained. He has an expression on his face like he’s just barely holding himself back from giving everyone a stern talking-to. “Lighten up,” she hisses to him. “It’s  _ fine _ .” He scowls at her, and she reaches over and hits him. 

The old lady who owns the place smells so strongly of perfume that Gorgug ends up stepping out of the shop altogether - Adaine doesn’t blame him, the scent really is overwhelming - and, when it becomes clear he isn’t coming back in, Riz leaves too so he isn’t sitting outside in the cold by himself. So it’s a girls’ outing, plus Fabian. 

Madam Silvaine, the owner, hovers around them cloyingly, asking what she can go and get for Adaine or what styles she’d like, but between Adaine herself and Fabian they convince her to at the very least let them look around on their own. 

Kristen tries to drag Adaine to the mens’ section, while Fig keeps bringing her frilly, hyperfeminine clothes, probably because she thinks it’s funny. Fabian is equally unhelpful, in that he doesn’t help at all, he stands by the counter and looks mildly uncomfortable as the shopkeeper talks his ear off and Adaine waves off Fig’s and Kristen’s suggestions. As much as Adaine would love to be content with her friends recommending things for her, she finds herself needing to take matters into her own hands. 

She just wants to wear unassuming clothes. Not frilly dresses with little strawberries on them, not suits, not the Hudol uniform. A tee shirt and jeans would be nice. 

So she goes, she pokes around, she finds some jeans in what she  _ thinks _ are her size (but she can never be sure, sizing changes from store to store and it’s one of the least efficient things ever), a few plain shirts, and a soft fleece-lined denim jacket with so many pockets. 

Adaine isn’t sure about the other clothes but she’s definitely sure about the jacket. She so desperately needs things with pockets. She does own a backpack, but it’s frustratingly small and doesn’t have little pockets for things like pencils or hair ties or chapstick. And she thinks she likes the idea of storing random things in the pockets, like a deck of cards or post-it notes or an extra set of fancy dice for that game Riz likes to play, that no one would expect her to have. 

It’s easy to find the dressing room. It’s a little harder to drag Fig and Kristen back there, but she manages. 

“Okay,” she warns them, “coming out.” Kristen laughs. “No - not like  _ that _ …” 

Adaine pushes the curtain aside and walks out in a pair of jeans that fits perfectly, a tee shirt that’s a little large (something she’d picked up from wearing Fig’s clothes - it was comfy!), and that jacket with the pockets. 

“Adaine,” Kristen tells her, openmouthed. “Holy  _ shit _ .” 

She’s immediately self-conscious. “Does it look weird?”

“No, no, no,” Fig rushes to correct her. “No, you look fucking awesome. Take a look in the mirror.” 

She lets Fig turn her so she’s looking at herself full-on in the mirror. 

Maybe it’s the lighting, the little bright dressing-room things surrounding the full-length mirror. Maybe it’s the tilt of the thing, angled to make her seem taller. Maybe it’s the color of the carpet, or the wallpaper, or maybe it’s just looking at Fig’s and Kristen’s enthusiastic faces in the reflection. But Adaine looks amazing. 

Not necessarily beautiful - yeah, she considers herself conventionally pretty, but she’s conventionally pretty in the Hudol uniform or Kristen’s tie-dye tees too. No, Adaine looks  _ confident _ . She looks like she’s been wanting to look for  _ months _ now. 

Somehow, she’d managed to snag clothes that fit her perfectly, that are comfortable, that she looks great in, and that make her look like she wants to look. Like a normal public high school kid. Truly the holy grail of shopping. 

“Oh my god,” she whispers. A smile starts spreading across her face - and before she knows it Adaine is smiling bigger than she had when Biz had told them about the CDs, bigger than after Goldenhoard had shut off the lights and sound at Ice Ball and they’d all known that they really had done something. 

Needless to say, Adaine buys the clothes. She has just enough on the gift card to cover the outfit, and once she’s bought it she dips back into the changing room and wears the clothes out. Yeah, she has to hide the shirt and the jacket under her huge winter coat, but still, she looks so  _ normal _ wearing jeans instead of a knockoff Hudol skirt and tights.

When she walks out, she interrupts a conversation between the guys - as far as she can tell, Gorgug and Riz are desperately trying to explain something to Fabian, but neither of them are able to quite articulate what the thing is they’re trying to explain and also Fabian can be pretty dense sometimes, so it’s not going well. 

Gorgug is actually the first to notice her. “Did you find what you wanted?” he asks, even as he notes the shopping bag with her old clothes and the jeans. 

“Adaine, you look wonderful,” Fabian adds, seeming exceptionally proud of himself for noticing. 

“Yeah,” she affirms, still smiling big - god, her mouth is starting to hurt. “Yeah, I really do.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> literally anything: happens  
> riz: i gotta tell my mom
> 
> the clothes shop absolutely has a version of the infamous strawberry dress btw
> 
> you'll notice i've changed the number of total chapters - it's finals, i don't know how much i'll be able to get done in the week break between class modules, and honestly i had no idea what i was going to really do for that fourteenth chapter anyway. so it's 13 chapters now. 
> 
> up next: a long night.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if the world is ending, let's stay up all night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary from [bad decisions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG0EDpePVsw) by bastille
> 
> cws for this chapter: adaine's parents, fabian's parents

**Riz**

A fact about Riz: he doesn’t get a lot of sleep. 

A fact about Adaine: she doesn’t, either. 

Riz spends most nights doing homework, updating the band website, waiting for his mom to get home, or reading. 

Adaine spends most nights doing homework, worrying, writing songs, or getting angry about things.

They text each other a lot. 

It’s mid-January and someone has just emailed something to the band website about a music competition at the Black Pit that they think the Bad Kids should enter. The heat in the apartment is working, but barely; the ancient radiator is sputtering, so even if Riz wanted to sleep right now, he couldn’t. He has a cup of coffee next to him, but when he goes to take a sip it’s gone cold. 

Fine. Whatever. Cold coffee is still coffee. 

It’s three in the morning. Adaine’s online. Riz is trying to figure out how to answer this email and where to find the website to sign up for this thing and is also drafting a message to send to the group text, because all six of them have to agree, right? 

Riz’s upstairs neighbor drops something that sounds _really_ heavy, and then they say _fuck_ loud enough that Riz can hear it crystal-clear even a floor below. 

_hey your moms a lawyer right_

It’s Adaine. 

_i mean sorta she’s taking lawyer classes_

_why_

Something starts sinking in his stomach. She’s taking a long time to respond. 

_so, hypothetically_

_if i got into a huge argument with my parents_

_and maybe just packed up and left the house_

_she would know what to do right_

Riz calls her. Riz just calls her. 

“Adaine, what the fuck.”

“I…” She sounds bewildered. “Hey, Riz.”

“Adaine what the fuck was that text.”

“I still can’t believe I did that.” 

His charger is fraying. It’s _been_ fraying for… oh, months now. Easily since before the school year started. But it’s only now that Riz zeroes in on it. It’s the only thing his eyes can focus on, and it comes into sharp resolution. He doesn’t know if he’s looked that closely at his phone charger before. 

“Adaine, _where are you_.” 

“Umm…” There’s a pause. He can’t hear traffic in the background of the call. That’s something people can notice in the movies, right? “I’m by the, uh. I’m by the middle school. I don’t know, I’ve never been in this area before, I just started walking…” 

Riz’s brain starts whirring. It takes him a moment, but he formulates something close to a plan. “Okay. Stay there. Just stay there. I’m going to hang up. Just stay where you are.” 

Oh, god. 

Adaine agrees, still sounding shaky. Then they hang up. Then Riz jumps into action. 

Item one. Text his mom. _hey i might not be home when you come back don’t worry i just need to talk to fig._ Not technically a lie. 

Item two. Related. Thunder down the stairs to Gilear’s apartment where he knows Fig is staying because she’d gotten into it with her mom again. Hammer on the door. Tell a very confused Gilear that he needs to see Fig, “immediately, it’s urgent”. Explain the situation to Fig. Wait while Fig throws on a jacket and her combat boots over her pajamas. Leave. 

Item three. Deputize Fig into looking up the bus schedules. Race back upstairs to grab his shitty charger, his cold coffee, his keys, and his own coat and shoes. Call Gorgug until he picks up (it takes him five tries), and tell him to get to Oakshield Middle as fast as possible. 

Item four. Wait ten minutes for the bus while Fig calls Kristen. Borrow Fig’s portable charger, because his phone is on thirty percent somehow. The battery really needs to be replaced. Call Fabian, who picks up on the first ring. 

Item five. Panic about the bus fare. Let Fig cover him when he realizes he doesn’t have enough quarters. Feel embarrassed about it. Ride the bus. The bus technically has heat, but it’s less effective than even the radiator in Riz’s apartment. The bus driver seems concerned. It’s a clear night and Riz is confused about how there can be so many stars out when they live in a big town with a fair amount of light pollution. This feels weird. This is so fucked up. 

Item six. Sit in the cold plastic bus seats for fifteen minutes outside the train station because buses always do this at big stops, apparently. No one gets on. He and Fig do not talk. He and Fig check their text messages and field questions from the others. 

Item seven. Call Adaine. She does not pick up. Get off the bus a block away from Oakshield Middle School. Run. 

He sees Gorgug first. Gorgug is riding his bike. Well, that said, Riz sees the headlights on the bike first, because Gorgug’s parents modded the thing all to hell. Gorgug halts next to the side doors of the middle school by the basketball court, leaps off the thing, and tumbles to the ground. Riz hears him curse, but once he stands up and brushes himself off, he stands still. 

Adaine stands out of reach of the streetlights. She has her school backpack and a duffel bag. She’s wearing the outfit she’d bought at the end of December - the jeans, the jacket - and she isn’t wearing a heavy coat. She is visibly shivering. 

Fig says, “holy shit, Adaine,” and then she hugs her. 

The four of them hear Fabian before they see him, and that’s because the dude has a fucking motorcyle, which was not something Riz knew that fifteen year olds are allowed to have before he met Fabian. Kristen texts and says that the next bus from her part of town to their direction isn’t for another hour but she hopes everyone’s okay. 

Riz had not planned for what would happen once they all got together. 

Fabian, though. Fabian takes control. He gives Riz, Fig, and Gorgug two dollars each for the bus (he can just _do that_. Fabian’s existence baffles Riz sometimes), and he tells Adaine to get on the back of his bike, and he tells Fig to call Kristen back and tell her to take the 24 bus towards downtown instead of the 39. 

His mom doesn’t text him. Riz thinks she has work until… five, maybe? One of her jobs schedules her at weird hours. It’s only 3:30. 

The 24 bus doesn’t come for another half hour. Fabian and Adaine end up deciding to wait with them until it comes. They have to walk two blocks and turn a corner to get to the bus stop. None of them talk the entire time. What would they even talk about. Gorgug gives Adaine his coat, and he stands there in his sweatshirt and doesn’t seem cold at all. 

The bus comes. Fabian and Adaine speed off. Gorgug puts his bike on the rack in front of the bus. Kristen is already there. They’re not alone on the bus. There’s the driver, of course, and there’s someone who looks like maybe a security guard from the mall sitting in the back with their headphones on. They’re listening to something loud with a lot of guitar. Tinny bits of the song bounce around the bus, a fucking weird soundtrack for the eerie situation in which they find themselves. 

They get off at the riverbank. It’s a short walk to Fabian’s house. He’s waiting outside the garage for them. “Adaine’s already inside,” he tells them. 

Riz maybe should have gone and gotten Adaine by himself. Riz maybe should have just called, say, Fabian, and stayed home instead of waking everyone else up and making them leave their homes at fuck o’clock on the morning. His mom is going to _kill him_. But, you know, he’s walking into Fabian’s house now with the rest of them, he’s gotten this far, he’s gonna commit. 

* * *

**Gorgug**

They’ve been to Fabian’s so many times for practice and yet none of them have ever been in his room. 

That changes, at just past four in the morning. 

Gorgug thinks he’s maybe the only one whose parents know where he is. It’s impossible, big as he is, to go anywhere on the Thistlespring property without alerting his parents (also, he couldn’t be stealthy if he tried) - he’d explained, and they’d told him to go be with his friend, of course she’d need company at a time like this. But knowing his friends, Fig and Riz probably told their parents half-truths and Kristen and Fabian just snuck out without saying anything to anyone. And Adaine, well. 

Fabian’s bedroom is huge. Everything in it is also huge. The king size bed with a canopy over it, the flatscreen taking up most of one wall, the computer, the sound system. Gorgug’s certain that if he opened the closet he’d find a walk-in bigger than his bedroom in the tree and more clothes than himself and Riz own put together. The five of them have been to Fabian’s house enough that Gorgug thinks maybe they should be done being surprised at how rich Fabian is but he’s pretty sure they all feel the same way now that they did when they’d come over the first time. 

The difference is that now, Fabian seems to pick up on it. 

He points to the bed. “Sit down,” he says, and then he gets a weird look on his face - Gorgug’s best guess is that maybe he realized that that sounded like he’s ordering them around - and just sits and pats the mattress. Fig is the first to take him up on it, lying down on her back at the foot of his bed with her head hanging off at one end. Everyone else follows. The bed is big enough that all six of them can sit on it - it’s maybe a tight fit, Gorgug and Fabian are squished together because they’re the biggest and both ended up at the head of the bed, but it’s good that way. 

“Adaine, what can we do right now?” asks Riz. 

“God, I just… I don’t know.” Adaine sighs. She leans a little bit to put her head on Kristen’s shoulder. “I don’t even know what I’m gonna do, like, where I’m gonna go. Let alone how to, like… I don’t know, emotionally… whatever.” 

Fig shrugs. “Well, the first part’s easy. Gilear absolutely will not care if you move in with me.”

“You sure?” Adaine presses. But Fig nods earnestly, and so Adaine deflates a little. No, not deflates, relaxes. Gorgug is not proficient in reading people’s body language. 

“Adaine,” Kristen offers, “I know that, like, our parents are wildly different and everything. But, you know, on some level I kind of get - like, the pressure to be someone else and whatever. And parents not acting like parents should. So if you ever want to talk, I’m here.” 

Adaine looks like maybe she’s about to cry. “Oh. I’ve got it. Can we talk about someone else’s problems? Just for a little bit? I want to not think about this right now, and my only other option is going to sleep and I don’t know if I can do that.” 

Kristen laughs. “Oh, we can always talk about my problems.” Fig makes a little noise of agreement. 

Their friendship dynamic, so far, is something like “the girls bond over complaining about their family, and the guys bond by rarely talking about their problems”. It works, most of the time. 

“So I’ve been seeing this girl,” starts Kristen. (They all know about Tracker. Gorgug, oblivious as he is, would have to be literally living under a rock to have not heard about Tracker.) “And, I mean. You know. We got ice cream a couple of times. We went to the mall. And it was really good, you know? It was nice. She just _gets_ it. Her parents were the same way as mine. But, I don’t know. It’s weird hiding so much from my parents. I didn’t used to do this. And it feels like I’m always on the edge of them finding out.” 

Everyone takes an appropriate moment to be solemn and process that, and then Kristen says, “okay, someone else go, I talk about this so much already.” 

So then Fig talks. It makes sense that she’s the next to go - the girls really are so much more open about their stuff than the guys are. She talks about having met her dad, her birth dad, rather, and about all the things she knows about her mom now. “I’m trying to see her as a complex person the way he tells me to, but like… she lied to me about this for fourteen years! I just don’t see how that’s-” 

That’s when Riz’s phone rings. Riz mutters something about “about time”, and takes the call. The conversation goes like this: “Hi, mom… yes, I’m fine… well, I _did_ go to Fig’s… we’re at Fabian’s now… hey, do you know how Adaine could get emancipated from her parents?... No, I think she was gonna go to Fig’s… no, I don’t.” This is awkward. “No, but I’m safe, I promise, I can send you a picture if you want?... Yes, I took my charger. No, sleep.” A very long pause during which Riz looks increasingly more embarrassed by the moment. “Tomorrow - well, today - _is_ Saturday… Yeah… Love you, mom.” 

He hangs up, and he looks incredibly chastised. Gorgug has only met Riz’s mom a couple of times, but he knows she’s a force of nature, even when she’s running on fumes. 

“Sorry, Fig,” says Riz. Fig says something about having been almost done anyway. Then Riz, Gorgug, and Fabian look back and forth between each other, trying to puzzle out which one of them has to talk next. It takes a minute, but eventually Gorgug decides it’s high time one of them says something and it might as well be him.

“Sometimes I wish I had actual problems with my parents.” 

It sounds bad, and he’s not great at stringing words together, so his explanation is all over the place, but eventually he explains in detail just how weird it is to have grown up half-orc in Little Branch, where he was too big for everything and everyone, how some kids were scared of him and some kids just made fun. He talks about middle school and the growing surety that everyone else was in on something that he didn’t understand, and about how his parents care a _lot_ but they just don’t get it. Whenever Gorgug gets angry something breaks; whenever his parents get angry they raise their voices for just a second and then it’s done. He just wishes that his parents weren’t so patient. It makes him feel like shit. 

“I know this is really insensitive,” he says, struggling to pull all the threads together. He grabs at the air with his hands like that’s going to help. “I don’t know. I just.” And, fuck, now Gorgug feels like shit for having even said anything. Should he leave? No, that’s weird, it’s too late-early for that. 

“No.” Fig reaches a hand out - hesitant, patient, they know he’s weird about touching sometimes, so she waits, and he takes it. “I get it. Like, I don’t know, before I met Gorthalax… and even now… like, I’m a tiefling in a house full of elves. We can be bulls in a china shop together.” 

“I know this doesn’t help, but your parents probably feel bad for not -” starts Adaine, and yeah, Gorgug knows. He isn’t going to cut her off, but she cuts herself off. Ugh, now this is weird. He made it weird. 

“I know you guys have met my parents,” and yeah, Gorgug is just gonna barrel on, because that’s what people do, right? “but, like, if you ever come over to the house, they absolutely will break out the photo albums.” 

This tactic must work somehow, because everyone laughs, and then their attention is either on Riz or on Fabian or flickering back and forth between the two of them. 

Riz is the one who steps up, this time, talking about his mom and his dad and his family’s finances with a nonchalance that’s honestly a little startling to Gorgug - like, at one point he makes a whole joke out of singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green”. But it’s more than he’s told any of them about the whole deal in the now four months that they’ve been friends, and it’s… a lot. Once it sinks in, the six of them just sit on the bed. They don’t even look expectantly at Fabian. Gorgug just stares at Fabian’s bedsheets, rubbing the edge of a pillowcase between his fingers. It’s a nice texture. 

Just at the moment where it seems they’re coming out of that silence, there’s banging from down the hallway. “Fabian! My darling boy!” comes from the direction of the noise - it’s loud, loud enough that Gorgug winces. 

Fabian turns and looks at them, and he seems almost scared. “Get behind the bed,” he tells them frantically, making shoving gestures towards the far side of the room. 

This is weird. Fabian isn’t often fazed by things. So Gorgug leaps off the bed and flattens himself to the floor on the far side of it, invisible to anyone who might come in through the door. The others follow. Kristen ends up literally on top of him, which means Gorgug can’t really move - he’s stuck looking at under Fabian’s bed. It’s surprisingly neat, for a guy their age, just a couple dust bunnies and a singular plastic bin that looks like it has paper in it. 

His audio processing is kind of fucked, so he isn’t sure he’s making everything out from the floor and over the sound of everyone’s breathing, but he thinks the conversation goes something like this.

Fabian: “Hello, Papa… it’s four thirty in the morning…” 

Fabian’s dad, apparently: “Oh, is it? Well, you’re awake, I’m awake… what does it much matter?” 

Fabian laughs nervously. “What is it, Papa?” 

Fabian’s dad: “We haven’t really talked in a while. How’s football?”

Fabian: “Football is over, Papa. It ended in November.” 

There’s a long pause. Then Fabian’s dad says, “Oh.” 

“Papa, I really should be going to sleep… you should also go to sleep…” 

“Alright,” huffs Fabian’s father. “I’ll be going, then.” And then it sounds like he just leaves. 

Kristen gets up off Gorgug’s back and sits back down on Fabian’s bed. As Gorgug stands, he watches Fabian flop facedown onto the bed. “...You good?” Gorgug asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer. 

Fabian sighs. “My father is… unpredictable.” 

They settle on the bed again, and then Adaine says, in a perfect imitation of someone in Penelope’s clique whose name Gorgug can never remember, “tell me more about that!” 

And it’s like all the tension is gone. They’re muffling their laughter, of course, but somehow everything that’s been built up inside of them over the past two and some hours just comes cascading out in this wave of hilarity. It’s just so surreal. They’re tired and they’re stressed and they all love each other, and Gorgug revels in that. 

Fabian is the first to sober, though. “I mean… do you really want to know, Adaine?” 

She shrugs. “I wanted everyone else to talk about their problems. This seems like one of your problems.” 

“My dad…” Fabian sighs. “How do I even… I don’t know, I just. He wants me to be just like him.”

“Boy, do I get that…” Adaine interjects, once it becomes clear that Fabian’s struggling to find words. 

“No, but like.” He takes a deep breath. “ _Just_ like him. Sea captain and everything. Down to the minutiae.” Here, Gorgug has to bite his lip to make sure he doesn’t smile, because who the fuck but Fabian uses the word _minutiae_ in casual conversation. “Like, he found out from my mom that you guys were over, and she mentioned Adaine, and he made this comment about how I should marry an elf just like him.” 

Adaine makes a face. “Oh. Gross.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s why I punched you on the first day,” Fabian says, turning to Gorgug. 

“Oh.” 

Gorgug mostly tries not to think about that, except for when he’s trying to go to sleep and it’s hard to keep himself from spiraling. They’re all friends now, Fabian was just trying to seem cool, it should be fine. 

Nevertheless, it’s one of the moments he comes back to when he’s stuck in a self-loathing cycle. 

“I’m really sorry about that, it’s just, I’m scared of what happens when I disappoint him, and he wasn’t going to drive off until he saw me hit someone-” 

“Fabian, it’s - it’s fine.” It isn’t, really, but he thinks that’s what Fabian needs to hear right now. 

Then he tells Gorgug, “I know you’re lying,” and Gorgug is suddenly, inexplicably angry, but he needs to not be angry. That’s not going to help anything right now. 

“Fabian. Please, just…” 

Fabian deflates. “Alright. Just - it’s just a lot. It’s a lot of pressure. And my mom’s not much help. I mean, you guys have met her.” 

They’ve only met Hallariel a couple of times, but she was pretty out of it on both occasions. Gorgug knows exactly what Fabian means. 

“My dude,” says Kristen. “My man… good sir… that is really fucked up.” 

“Yeah,” responds Fabian. “It sure is.” 

Someone knocks on the door, and Riz immediately dives behind the bed again. Gorgug smirks, but he’s still apprehensive. 

“Master Fabian?” 

Oh, it’s just Cathilda. They’ve met Cathilda. She’s Fabian’s family’s maid, and she sometimes brings them snacks and leaves them in the music room when they’re over. 

“Oh.” Fabian looks at them. Gorgug nods encouragingly - he doesn’t think Cathilda will be upset at their presence. “Do come in, Cathilda,” he calls towards the door. 

She pokes her head in and smiles. “You’ve got your young friends over, have you? Did they enjoy your gifts?” 

Fabian blushes deep. “Cathilda, whatever are you talking about, I thought the whole point was to-” 

“Just wanted to see if you’d like anything to snack on,” Cathilda says, smiling pleasantly. Fabian tries to brush her off, but then Fig asks for some pastries if she has any, and Cathilda laughs and says she’ll be right back. She closes the door behind her. 

All eyes rest on Fabian once again. “Your gifts,” Riz repeats. “Care to enlighten us?” 

Fabian looks down. He seems embarrassed, which isn’t a _new_ look on Fabian but it isn’t generally a common one. “The stuff in your lockers. That was me. Cathilda shouldn’t have said anything.” 

“That was _you_?” Gorgug cuts in incredulously. “But you got… you got something too! Bike stuff!” 

“...Didn’t want to make it obvious.” 

“But why?” Kristen presses. “I thought you’d love the attention that came with the gratitude, or whatever. Or did you just want an excuse to buy something…” 

He shakes his head. “I just didn’t want you guys to know it was me. I… I know this isn’t true, I know that you guys don’t like how rich my family is, but sometimes I worry that’s the only reason you keep me around.” 

“You’re right,” Fig laughs. “We really don’t like it. We keep you around because you’re you, dumbass.” 

“...Oh.” 

Something inside Gorgug goes, _to hell with it_ , and he tackles Fabian in a hug. And then Kristen and Fig follow suit and then they’re just a pile, and then Cathilda comes in with the cookies, and then eventually people’s parents show up; Gilear plays carpool parent for most of the group, because Kristen doesn’t want to call her parents and Adaine lives at the apartments now too and Riz didn’t want his mom to have to wake up. Gorgug’s own parents come and they ask him if he had fun and he says yeah, he did. And he goes to bed (as much as it can be called “going to bed” at six in the morning) and he falls asleep easy, with a smile on his face, because he just fucking loves his friends so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello this chapter is one of my favorites. 
> 
> we are! so close to the end guys! i cannot fucking believe it! 
> 
> up next: a montage


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i felt a rush like a rolling bolt of thunder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary from [december 1963 (oh what a night)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUhnIY3oRM) by the four seasons
> 
> cw this chapter for underage drinking mention

**Fig**

It’s nice having three of them in the apartments together. She and Adaine get along great as roommates - there was one short debacle about Fig being messy where Adaine was neat but it was quickly solved by putting down masking tape across the floor, delineating whose side of the room was whose, and Fig was allowed to be messy but her mess wasn’t allowed to cross the tape, and that was alright. She, Adaine, and Riz like to hang out in the basement by the vending machines - between the three of them, one of them always has quarters, so they’ll get a little bag of Cheez-Its or whatever and share it between them just to have something to do. 

They also make a habit of lying on the floor together. Usually in Riz’s apartment, but they vacate once Riz’s mom comes home from work or class so that she can have some peace and quiet - lying on the floor usually involves some bickering and wild gesturing and occasionally impromptu jam sessions. It’s good. It’s all the nice parts of having siblings without the tussling and the parental favoritism. 

The band still practices at Fabian’s, but whenever they hang out other times - more and more, now that Fabian doesn’t have football anymore and Adaine is no longer bound to the times she can get a bus home - it’s at the apartments. Occasionally, they’ll “pool their money” (that is, they  _ say _ they’re all contributing but Fabian finds a way to cover the entire check every time) and order food in. In February, there had been an effort to try and set up Sklonda and Gilear, but Riz had eventually put his foot down - his mom needs to not be handling Gilear on top of everything else she does, and he isn’t sure how he feels about Gilear as a stepfather. 

Fig, personally, thinks it would be kind of fun if they were all family, but whatever. 

Gorthalax comes around, every once in a while. He makes Riz’s mom blush, and now there’s a betting pool to see if those two are gonna get together. They aren’t betting anything serious - winning side has to treat losing side to ice cream. He gives Fig music advice, and regales her with stories from when he was young and dating her mom… but he still won’t tell her where he’s living now. 

“So the Black Pit people got back to me today,” Riz informs her. 

It’s March. This battle of the bands thing is in mid-April. Gilear is, somehow, out of the apartment outside of work hours for once, so they’ve convened on the aging but still functional couch in the Faeth apartment. Well, when Fig says on the couch, she means that she’s lying on the floor, Adaine is perched on one of the arms, and Riz is taking up the couch itself. 

“Fucking finally,” mutters Adaine, who’s munching on Ritz crackers that Fig thinks might be a little stale. “Didn’t you submit the, uh, the thing, like a month ago?” 

“Yeah,” Riz confirms, “Like a week into February. They said - they were like, they said that they hadn’t responded because they didn’t have space for us originally because it’s their policy or whatever to just ghost people-”

“And fuck that,” interjects Fig. 

“Fuck that,” Riz agrees. “But, so, apparently one of these bands pulled out, and we’re still like five weeks out from the thing so they figured that’d be enough time for us to get something together?” 

“Which it is,” Adaine points out. 

“No, yeah. Honestly, they’re putting everything together really far in advance. I guess this is what to expect from annual things. But, so, I forwarded the email to everyone, and Fabian responded to the email - who does that? He can just text me?” 

“Riz.” Fig deadpans. “You’re the one who forwarded us an email instead of just texting us a screenshot.” 

Adaine laughs, and Riz has to agree. “I mean, yeah, I guess.” 

“Also, we’re right here,” Adaine says. “Care to tell us the contents of that email?” 

“Uhmmm…” Riz squinches up his face, trying to remember exactly. “That we were in, that bullshit excuse about policy, a rehearsal schedule for the week before, and that we have to prepare a three-song set.” 

“ _ Three _ ? That seems like a lot. How many bands do they have-”

“I’ll text Gorthalax,” Fig volunteers. “I’m sure he’s gone to band stuff like this before. He’d know what the standard is.” 

“They didn’t tell me how many,” Riz answers Adaine. “But I know that Johnny Spells’ group is one of them.”

“Oh, school’s gonna go wild once they hear we’re in too,” conjectures Fig. 

“Yeah.” Adaine nods. “Like, which of us is gonna do better, I’m sure it’ll be a whole thing.” 

“I still can’t believe Goldenhoard banned headphones in the hallways because too many people were listening to us,” Riz muses. 

“It’s fucked up!” Fig agrees. “But it means that we’re making an impact. We represent a real threat to him, now.” 

“Fig,” Adaine tells her, face grave, “I cannot wait for the day you discover politics.” 

Living near each other is also great on nights like the one a week later, when Fabian calls them around midnight. Phone calls after dark - well, in their friend group, the last time this happened they’d all gone to Fabian’s and talked about life, so when Fig picks up she’s half expecting Fabian to be in crisis or something, but instead he tells her to turn on the radio to one of the local stations. 

“Fabian,” she tells him. “Slow down. What?” 

“We’re on,” he says, “the radio.” 

Fig skyrockets out of her bed and finds the radio station app on her phone. She turns the volume all the way up and, sure enough, it’s one of the songs from the Ice Ball performance. 

Adaine isn’t asleep, of course, but she’d been drawn into something on her computer, and when Fig starts blasting the music she looks up. “What is it?” she asks. 

Fig just brandishes the phone at her. 

As soon as it registers with Adaine what they’re hearing, she sets her laptop aside. “Oh my god,” she says. “We have to find Riz.” 

Riz had evidently come to the same conclusion, because they barely get up one set of stairs before they run into him on the landing. “My mom texted me,” he tells them, breathless. “She was at work and it came on -” 

Then his phone rings. It’s Fabian, presumably to tell him what he’d told Fig and Adaine. Riz picks up and the two of them shout about it to each other for a little while (and Fig and Adaine join in on some of the shouting too). They’d caught their song right at the beginning, so they bounce around the staircase, dancing to it and yelling to Fabian over the phone, for four and a half minutes, maybe incurring noise complaints from the people with the poor luck to live closest to the stairs but they don’t even  _ care _ . They’re  _ on the radio _ . 

The song finishes, and Fabian hangs up because he needs to go process what just happened with Cathilda, but the three of them stay in the landing a little while longer, kings of the castle (or, at the very least, of Strongtower Luxury Apartments. The landlord has nothing on them). 

* * *

**Kristen**

She and Tracker go to the diner. 

It’s kind of a dive, but it’s near enough to both of their houses, and the fries are pretty good. Usually, their dates are a walk by the river, or ice cream at Basrar’s, or Kristen just goes over to Tracker’s house. But Kristen’s parents are out of town for the weekend, with her brothers - they told her she’s old enough to stay home on her own - which means they have a little more leeway in where they can go and for how long. 

So, they get dinner. Jawbone insists on covering them both, which basically means that Tracker pays, which basically means that this is a date. 

Neither of them are really dressed up - but, well, it’s a skeevy diner, it’s not like there’s much of an occasion. It  _ feels _ like an occasion, though, to Kristen. Every time she’s with Tracker, that’s what it feels like. 

They talk about stuff, usually. About their parents, and religion, sometimes. Sometimes Tracker talks about her school, or Kristen talks about the band. (There’s a lot to talk about, when it comes to the band - and Tracker’s online school gossip is surprisingly really interesting.) And, yeah, sometimes they make out, but that’s usually only when they’re in Tracker’s room. 

Tracker has a habit of gesturing with her french fries. It’s kind of cute. 

“... and so then, I think the teacher’s wi-fi cut out, and you know how you say that if the teacher’s not there in fifteen minutes you can just leave? Well, we sat there in silence for fifteen minutes and then we just hung up.” 

“And you never finished the debate?”

“No!” Tracker answers, underscoring it with a slap to the table. “Which is a darn shame because I really thought I’d have that Angus kid trapped in his own hypocrisy if we went on for five more minutes.” 

“That  _ is _ a darn shame,” agrees Kristen. 

“Indeed,” Tracker nods. “Ugh, I’m all worked up about it now. It’s your turn.” 

“My turn?” Kristen repeats. She tries to think about something new to talk about - Tracker hears about most things as they happen. Kristen has a habit of texting her every time something important or funny or annoying goes down. She knows about the upcoming gig at the Black Pit, she knows about Dayne Blade trying to shove Riz into a locker and getting thwarted by Fabian, she knows about the last fight Kristen had with her parents about the Helioic Crusades and her new religion book. 

Looking around the diner, she spots a jukebox. 

Perfect. 

“Be right back,” Kristen informs Tracker. She reaches into her jacket pocket - she has plenty of quarters, because between riding the bus places all the time and occasionally funding the vending machine trips when they all hang out at Strongtower she kind of has to - and then wanders up to the jukebox, surveying the songs available. 

She eventually picks “December, 1963”, mostly because it’s the only one on the jukebox that she’s actually heard before. She recognizes some of the other titles, but doesn’t know how those songs go. 

Kristen dances back to the table, smiling. Her hair’s down today - unusual for her, but Tracker says she thinks Kristen’s pretty with her hair down, so - and it swishes across her shoulders as she returns. “Care to dance?” she asks, offering Tracker a hand. 

“I’d be honored,” Tracker says, grinning. They hold hands and Kristen and Tracker weave between the tables at this almost-empty diner, mostly just walking in rhythm, but Tracker knows how to swing dance so she teaches Kristen midway through the song. It’s hard - she has to pay no attention to the time signature, just to the tempo. It goes against most of what she knows about music, and she’s terrible at it, but it’s fun to try, and Tracker looks cute smiling at her like that. 

Kristen sings along, making sure to wink at Tracker whenever she comes to the line “what a lady, what a night”. Tracker isn’t someone who blushes, but when Kristen does that she gets all bashful and looks away. 

Her face hurts from smiling and her heart is filled with love. 

When the song winds down, they both look around, embarrassed and cautious. The only other people in the diner are a businessman engrossed in his newspaper, and the waitress, who smiles at them. 

Kristen and Tracker go back to their table. Kristen sips her mediocre milkshake - nothing really holds up to Basrar’s - and watches Tracker. She’s just so pretty, Kristen muses. Her broad shoulders and her muscles and her cool haircut, and the way she smiles when Kristen stumbles over her words and the way she tastes when they kiss. Eventually, Kristen ignores her milkshake and just looks at her, cheek resting on the heel of her hand. She’s sure she looks ridiculously lovestruck, and that’s fine, because she is. 

They eat their cheap diner food in silence for a little while. That’s one of the things Kristen has noticed - when you really have a great relationship with someone, it’s okay to be quiet. She doesn’t have to fill the silence. They can just sit there and eat, and it’s fun anyway, just because they’re together. 

It’s on their way out when Tracker speaks again. “This was really great, Kris,” she says. 

Kristen smiles. She’s been smiling so much tonight - she always smiles so much, around Tracker - but she can’t help it. “I thought it was really great too.” 

The door closes behind them, and they stand on the steps of the diner. Tracker is quiet for a moment, and they just look at each other. The sun has set, it set a while ago, and the sky is teetering on the edge of dusk and night. 

“I love you, Kristen,” Tracker says finally. 

Kristen is pretty sure her face lights up like a traffic light. Or a tomato. Or something else big and round and red. This is more than she’d ever dreamed of. Well, she’d dreamed about saying  _ I love you _ to Tracker, sure, but she had only just started considering it as a real possibility. 

The thing is, Tracker then turns and runs off, and Kristen has to chase after her. “Hey!” she shouts. “You can’t just say that and then leave before I can say it back!” 

“Then say it back.” 

It’s getting windy. Kristen’s hair is blowing everywhere, getting in her face - it’s times like this she’s jealous of Tracker and her short haircut. 

Here is where she’s going to say it, in a parking lot, the diner behind her lighting up neon and chrome. 

“Tracker,” says Kristen Applebees, “I love you too.” 

* * *

**Fabian**

This is just painful to watch. 

Gorgug talking to his crush, Zelda, is one of the most excruciating things Fabian has ever witnessed. Both of them are so shy and so awkward and every time one of them says something they both blush even deeper than they had been. 

All of Gorgug’s blood is probably in his face by now. 

He’d walked into Riz’s apartment earlier saying, “I’m gonna be brave. I’m gonna send her a friend request,” and they’d all hovered around him while he did that, and then Zelda accepted and unfriended and friend-requested like five times. And then they’d decided that he had to text her, so they clustered around him and dictated text messages. 

Somehow, it had ended up that Gorgug had asked Zelda out for ice cream, and so the rest of them had come along to act as emotional support/emergency backup. Gorgug and Zelda are in a two-person booth near the door; the rest of them are in their usual spot. Fabian had deviated from his usual place so that he could have the best view of the disaster that’s the two of them together. 

Dating really is a group activity, huh. 

The two of them have already ordered. Gorgug paid. Fabian’s exceptionally proud of him, actually, he’s doing a great job considering that just before they’d left Riz’s he was an anxious mess and didn’t talk to any of them until they actually walked into the ice cream shop. 

Adaine, Kristen, and Riz are playing Go Fish with the set of playing cards Adaine’s taken to carrying around in one of her many jacket pockets. Fig’s watching Gorgug and Zelda too, but probably with not as much subtlety as Fabian is. More than once now Fabian’s had to smack her on the arm to get her to stop conspicuously ogling the two of them. 

Zelda had noticed them pretty quickly. One of the only snippets of conversation that Fabian had caught, when she walked in, was, “are your friends here, to, like - is this a joke?” Gorgug had profusely reassured her that no one was here to laugh at her, and that the others were just here because they wanted ice cream. 

Just because she knows they’re here, though, doesn’t mean that Fig is allowed to make it obvious. 

“Tone it down,” he scolds her, “and eat your ice cream. It’s melting.” 

“I like it that way,” scowls Fig. “It’s soup. Ice cream soup.” 

Riz looks up in shock from where he’s absolutely demolishing Adaine and Kristen at Go Fish. “Ice cream soup? Fig Faeth, you’re disowned. I’m disowning you.” 

“You’re not my dad. You’re not either of my dads,” Fig shoots back. 

“Come  _ on _ , guys,” Riz appeals to the others. “Ice cream soup.” 

“You don’t have room to talk, you’ve eaten way more cursed things than melty ice cream,” admonishes Adaine. “Like the road juice.” 

Fig bursts into laughter. “The road juice!”

Fabian’s already heard the road juice story, but they set about explaining it to Kristen - a baking experiment at the Faeth apartment had gone horribly wrong, resulting in a vaguely minty-tasting hard candy that got warmer whenever someone touched it. Fabian hadn’t been present for this one, but Riz had treated him to a play-by-play the next day. 

He goes back to watching the date. Zelda has clearly just startled Gorgug more than usual - from Fabian’s top-notch vantage point, he can see Gorgug frantically bouncing one of his legs up and down, the way Riz does when he’s concentrating. He looks tense, shoulders tight.  _ Come on _ , Fabian thinks.  _ You’ve got this _ . 

Five months ago, Fabian absolutely would not have trusted Gorgug to go on a date with someone without screwing it up. But the combination of five close friends and general popularity (and the fact that, with the exception of Ragh and Dayne, he’s been relatively left alone by the meaner upperclassmen) had done wonders for Gorgug’s confidence. Everyone’s confidence, really. 

“The road juice isn’t even the worst thing, though,” Kristen argues across from him. “Remember that time you drank just straight soy sauce?” 

“We were playing truth or dare!” Riz shouts, slamming his hands on the table, which startles Adaine and sends a couple of the napkins flying. 

“Kristen. You can’t argue either,” Fig points out. “You drank Mountain Dew with tabasco sauce in it.” 

Fabian has to bring his attention back to the table. “Pardon?” he asks Kristen, incredulously. He grimaces - he can’t  _ imagine _ the way that would taste, per se, but something inside him viscerally knows that it would taste bad. 

Kristen blinks at him. “Would it help if I told you I was drunk?” 

“ _ No _ !” 

Adaine sighs. “The most recent party she and I went to - the one where it was just us because you had sports and Fig had designated Gorthalax time - I wanted to leave early so I let that stoner firbolg supervise her. I guess she wanted something weird to drink, but I told him not to let her get any more drunk, so he and Katja Cleaver thought it would be funny if they mixed those two things together to see if she’d drink it.” 

“...and she did,” Fabian fills in.

“Yeah!” Kristen says. “I actually don’t remember what it tasted like. I might do it again while I’m sober just to see.” 

Fabian and Adaine say things along the lines of “please no”, but Fig and Riz respond enthusiastically enough that he and Adaine are drowned out. It’s enough clamor that Fabian sees Gorgug and Zelda actually turn, distracted, to eye them warily. 

“Shut up,” he commands. “We’re interrupting the date.” 

“Oh, right!” exclaims Kristen. “The date! Oh, guys, did I tell you, last week I went on this date with Tracker-” 

“To the diner, right.” Riz rolls his eyes. Fabian doesn’t blame him. They’ve heard the story half a billion times already. 

“No - well, no, it’s not the one you’re thinking of. We went again,” Kristen corrects him. 

“Alright, Kristen, tell us about it. Also, do you have any fives.” Adaine, calm as ever, steers them back to the card game. 

Kristen launches into a play-by-play of her most recent date. Fig is rapt, but Fabian tunes out again, attention turning back to Zelda and Gorgug, who seem to have gotten their act together - Gorgug doesn’t seem like a coiled spring anymore, anyway. Zelda appears to be talking animatedly and Gorgug is… taking notes? 

Whatever floats their boat. 

Gorgug rides the bus with her, back to her house. What a gentleman. As soon as he leaves, Fig and Kristen start spam-texting him. Well, they spam-text the groupchat - Fabian’s not checking his phone, but Riz has his set to vibrate like the old man he is, and it keeps making an unpleasant noise against the tabletop, so either Riz’s mom is mad at him or Fig and Kristen are using the grouptext. 

They go home after that. Fabian brings home some ice cream for Cathilda. He checks his messages when he gets home - he scrolls past the spam from earlier, and just reads Gorgug’s updates.

_ i am SO TIRED i am going to go to sleep now im not talking to any more people for the next 24 hours _

It’s worth noting that it’s just barely 7:30 at night. 

_ but it was fun her dad gave me the shovel talk (that was not fun) and she told me all about metal music _

_ i thought i listened to a lot of metal but i was wrong. she listens to more.  _

_ oh and we’re boyfriend girlfriend now, apparently _

Fabian’s satisfied.  _ good i’m happy for you _ , he texts back. 

Oh, how far they’ve come. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably my favorite of all the chapters. i really love this one
> 
> also, all the food crimes mentioned in fabian's section are things i have personally witnessed. (actually i know there are some people who go to college with me who are really into d20 so if you go to mhc all of those things happened in superblanch lmao)
> 
> up next: it's a secret :)))


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i think she's crashing out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone! updating a day early because i have great news: I FINALLY FINISHED THIS FIC LAST NIGHT! so you get chapter 12 now :)
> 
> in my notes this chapter was called "woo babey it's disaster time" and i really think that tells you all you need to know. 
> 
> cws for this chapter: parent injuring a child (fabian's section), applebees-typical homophobia (kristen's section). please skip the section(s) if either of those things are triggering to you! it is nothing outside the realm of what happens in fh canon but nevertheless please be careful. 
> 
> summary from [epiphany](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUnDkI7l9LQ) by taylor swift

**Fabian**

“Fabian, my darling boy!”

Shit. 

Fabian had hoped to slip out of the house without anyone but Cathilda noticing, but his parents were eating together at the table for once, and he hadn’t been expecting it. His mom isn’t incredibly perceptive, he can slip by her easily, but his dad can be hypervigilant sometimes. Now is one of those times. 

“Ah, yes, hi, Papa,” Fabian says weakly, staring into the dining room. His mother is slumped over at the table - not unusual - and his father is sitting up ramrod straight, eyes locked on Fabian. 

“Where are you off to?” 

“Uh…” 

Fabian can pinpoint the exact moment his father’s eyes catch on the sheaf of sheet music tucked under his arm. He should have brought a backpack. Too late now. 

“You’ve been sneaking around this whole year,” murmurs his father, contemplatively. “Keeping secrets. Hiding things. I don’t like it when people keep secrets from me, my boy, you know that.” 

Fabian isn’t a  _ bad  _ liar, but he feels like maybe the jig is up with this one. Best to come clean. 

He sighs heavily. “I’m in a band, Papa.” 

His father’s face is stony. “You’re in a what?”

“A  _ band _ ,” he repeats. His father is unpredictable at best, and he’s already regretting his choice to come clean - this could end badly. 

Sure enough, Bill Seacaster abruptly stands. The chair he’d been sitting in falls backward to the ground. “You,” he tells Fabian, “kept this information from me. You know that doesn’t fly, not in my house.” He approaches Fabian, and Fabian backs away. He tries to catch his mom’s eye, but of course she isn’t even looking up. 

Fabian has always known that, someday, he and his father would get in a physical altercation. It was simply a matter of when. 

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t shock him when his father tries to sock him in the stomach, in a move oddly reminiscent of what Fabian had done to Gorgug the first day of school. It hurts, physically and emotionally. 

Fabian hits back, and then, well. They trade blows. His mother doesn’t do anything. They only stop once Cathilda storms in, and shouts at them, “Now alright, that’s enough of that!” 

He doesn’t expect his father to actually listen to Cathilda, but he does. She’s a force to behold, sometimes. They separate. And Fabian becomes aware, not suddenly but a little at a time, that his right hand really, really hurts. 

Like, really hurts. Like maybe something is  _ wrong _ hurts. 

His father just storms out the door. Fabian is only a little bit cognizant of that, because he’s realizing very quickly that  _ something is wrong with his hand and he needs to play piano later, oh fuck _ . His mother is still slumped on the table. Fabian is angry. 

“Alright,” Cathilda tells him calmly, “I’m going to drive you over to the urgent care and we’ll get that hand looked at, okay?” 

“Cathilda…” he looks up at her. “I’m supposed to play today. The band…” 

“I know.” She sighs. “I know, young master Fabian. We’ll get there when we get there.” 

As Cathilda walks him out the door and to the car, Fabian wants a lot of things. Mostly, he wants to tell off his mother for having done  _ nothing _ when his father had leapt at him. But he doesn’t. He keeps quiet. As Cathilda starts the car and drives, he simmers. He thinks he understands something central about Adaine, now.

* * *

**Riz**

Here is a thing that is true about the Strongtower Luxury Apartments: they suck. The temperature is never right, and the windows are always drafty, and Riz isn’t sure that the fire escape is up to code. Their landlord takes forever to fix things when they break,  _ especially _ the hot water, and the walls are so incredibly thin. 

Here is a thing that is true about Riz: he has the misfortune to live there. 

It’s getting into real spring, now, but it’s still too cold at night and too hot during the day, and their upstairs neighbor keeps dropping stuff at weird hours. His mom’s hours have been getting more strange as time goes by, and he isn’t sure when the last time she went grocery shopping was. He’d gone out himself a couple of times and just bought, like, pasta and some orange juice, and both times she’d left him a note on the kitchen table telling him she appreciated it. 

Riz wakes up the morning of the Black Pit’s Battle of the Bands with a raging headache. 

“Fuck,” he mumbles, and shoves his head back into the pillow. “Not today, not today…” 

Then his mom comes in, which surprises him. Usually she’s either asleep or at work this time of day. 

“Hi, sweetie,” she says. “Big day today.” 

“Mmph,” Riz tells his pillow. “Yeah.” 

“I took the day off so I could go see it,” she informs him. This is enough to (only momentarily) make Riz’s headache subside enough that he can sit straight up in bed. 

“You  _ what _ ?” 

“Sweetie, this has been an important project for you for months now, this band thing. You think I wouldn’t try to come see it?” 

It makes him kind of want to cry. As much as his life kind of sucks, his mom really is awesome. “I mean, I expected you to  _ want _ to, but I thought that with work…” 

“I’ve been saving up my time off since you told me about it,” she tells him, smiling. “Speaking of my day off, I really should run to the store while I have the chance. Back soon.” His mom pulls the curtain closed, and he hears the door close soon after. 

Alright. He has to get up now. 

But it’s hard. Riz feels like he hasn’t slept for days, which doesn’t make any sense because he thinks he probably got more sleep last night than he has in months. He’d made a point of lying down earlier than usual and closing his eyes and  _ breathing _ . His head keeps pounding, and he feels shaky. 

_ It’s just nerves _ , he tries to convince himself, as he staggers out of bed and pulls his clothes on.  _ You’re fine. You’re just nervous. This is a big day. _

When his mom comes home, he’s face-down on their crappy couch. This is not a position Riz usually likes to be in - the couch is less than comfortable, and not very clean. He and his mom try to keep the apartment tidy, but sometimes Riz doesn’t notice when things are a mess, and lately his mom’s been either too busy or too tired to really take care of things. Also, he’s not so sure about the couch’s - can furniture have structural integrity? He ponders that for a moment. Anyway, the couch is probably on the verge of falling to pieces. His head still hurts. Maybe his body’s just confused because he got more sleep than usual. That’s a thing that can happen, right? Yeah, that’s it, probably. 

It has to be. 

Riz drags himself up off the couch to help his mom put away the groceries. It’s a testament to how tired his mom usually is that she hasn’t noticed that he’s feeling off by now; it’s a testament to how observant she is that she notices when she does. 

“Honey, are you feeling okay?” she asks when Riz nearly topples over trying to put a box of cereal into the cupboard above the sink. 

“I just lost my balance,” Riz lies. 

His mom eyes him. “Riz.” 

“When are they gonna get the heating fixed in here?” he tries deflecting. “It’s freezing.” This isn’t a lie - he really is cold. It feels like January at midnight. 

She makes a funny face at him. Not ha-ha funny, concerned funny. “Riz, the temperature is fine. For once.”

Oh fuck. 

She walks into the bathroom and emerges with a thermometer, and even if Riz had felt like getting out of his temperature being taken he wouldn’t have been able to. He’s just so tired. So he lets his mom walk him back to the couch and stick the thing in his mouth. 

“You have a fever, kid,” she tells him. “Hate to break it to you.” 

This absolutely cannot be happening. No no no. Not today. Today’s too important. 

“Okay, but, like, I’m fine to play, though,” Riz says anxiously. 

She sighs. “I won’t stop you from going. Mostly because I know that if I tried, you’d find a way anyway.” His mom shakes her head. “But I  _ am  _ going to make you go lie down until it’s time to go. What time do you have to go?” 

He tells her. 

“Fine.” She walks him back to his bed, one hand on his back the whole time. “I will wake you up so you can eat before we leave. And I’m driving you. I know you probably have another ride. So text them, and then  _ go back to sleep _ .” 

Riz gets under the covers, and then he says, “I love you, Mom.” 

His mom smiles. “I love you too.” And then she pulls the curtain shut.

* * *

**Gorgug**

This whole thing is stupid, really, because he’d just left his drumsticks in his locker like an idiot and had to go back and get them. It’s not his fault that the football team was hanging out on the field. It’s not his fault that Ragh just happened to be around. It’s not his fault that Ragh shoved him up against a wall. 

This is not what he wants right now. This is not what he needs. But it’s happening. 

Gorgug is strong, but right now Ragh is stronger, and he’s got both Gorgug’s shoulders pinned. It’s overcast outside. And Gorgug is angry. 

He needs to calm down. If he doesn’t calm down, he’s going to go full nuclear. Going full nuclear will be bad, and more importantly it will be embarrassing, because even with his newfound popularity he’s still terrified of people really seeing what happens when he fully loses control. He tries to do the breathing exercises his parents always made him do as a kid, but with Ragh still in his face sneering about the weird way he strings words together and how the band is stupid and everything else, it’s hard to keep his cool. 

Gorgug Thistlespring is going to snap. 

“What the fuck do you want,” he finally spits at Ragh. He always just sits there and takes it. Yeah, sometimes he hits back, but he hits once and he’s done. This  _ needs to stop _ , once and for all. 

No, he can’t think like that. He needs to calm down, he needs to - 

He doesn’t even hear what Ragh says next but he knows it’s something terrible, and then everything blurs. It’s like the world around him slows down, or maybe he and Ragh are sped up, but Gorgug knows one thing - he’s the one to throw the first punch. 

From there it’s a whirlwind. Fists and feet meet stomachs and shoulders, Ragh’s football prowess squares off against Gorgug who has simply had enough. Going nuclear, sometimes, means that he has no idea what he’s doing or what’s happening, just that it’s a  _ lot _ that’s happening, and that lashing out keeps all the overwhelming stuff at bay. 

Something snaps. Not emotionally - literally, he hears something break. He doesn’t  _ think _ it’s any part of his body, but until he really comes back to himself he won’t be able to be sure. He keeps hitting, because what else can he do right now. 

It’s when his fists start meeting air that he finally cools down. 

As the world around him starts coming into focus, he sees Ragh, on the ground. And Gorgug is the first to admit that he’s terrible at reading people, but Ragh… doesn’t look scared of him. Which is weird, because most people, after they see him go nuclear, are. His parents, although that’s lessened with time. The band had, after he’d lost it out of built-up frustration during practice.

Gorgug  _ hurts _ . Ragh has hit him in a whole lot of places. But, as he takes Ragh in, it looks like he’d held his own. 

He feels exhausted. He wants to go home and go to sleep. He wants to sit down and cry. The fight has washed out of him. 

He forces himself to keep standing anyway. He forces himself to talk, even though it’s just going to make things worse later. 

“You’re not scared,” is what he finally manages, after maybe thirty seconds of him and Ragh just staring at each other. 

Ragh shrugs. “I can hold my own.” 

They’re quiet for a while, taking each other in. The football team shouts in the background. Gorgug starts putting some things together. 

The way Ragh talks about Dayne, sometimes. Like he hung the moon, or is the sun, or could steal all the stars from the sky if he so chose. The way Ragh’s justification for pushing them around is always something about keeping the popular kids popular. The way Ragh is around Penelope, like he hates her almost. The way he always looks at Dayne after doing something, like he’s looking for approval; the way Ragh had seemed almost desperate when he’d come out of nowhere and shoved Gorgug against the wall. 

Gorgug realizes that Ragh has a black eye blossoming on one side of his face. Gorgug realizes that that had been there when he’d first seen Ragh - he couldn’t have done that. 

Gorgug realizes that, just as much as the fight’s been drained out of him, it’s been drained out of Ragh too. 

Insight often eludes Gorgug. He is not an observant person; he doesn’t know how people or conversations or relationships work most of the time. It helps, though, that the gears starting to turn in his head are gears Kristen had already installed - that is, the theory that’s slowly coming together is one that Kristen has already speculated about at length. It helps that he’s spent the past school year around Fabian, who, like Ragh, is a jock who pretends he has no feelings until he can’t pretend anymore. 

_ Oh my god _ , he realizes.  _ Ragh likes Dayne _ . 

Gorgug struggles to even conceptualize what to do with this realization. Does he say something? Does he turn around and just leave, knowing that he has leverage now? His confusion is only heightened by two loose ends churning around in his brain - the black eye, the defeat - and he isn’t sure he likes the shape those loose ends will take once they’re stitched together. 

He also isn’t sure, right now, that he could make words even if he knew what to say. Sometimes, he knows he  _ could _ talk if he wanted, but he doesn’t know that he trusts his voice to say what he wants. Now is one of those times. 

He’s also still staring at Ragh, so he figures he’d better do something soon. 

As awful as Ragh has been to him, Gorgug kind of feels bad. Because for most of his life he’s gone to sleep at night staring up at the ceiling hoping and praying that people will like him, someday, if not now. Looking at Ragh still on the concrete, spent, he feels a kind of awful familiarity.

His friends went out of their ways to prove that he really was their friend, and he thinks maybe that’s what Ragh needs. Proof that, really, he’s alright. 

Here’s the thing about Gorgug. He solves problems really weird sometimes. Like, he comes up with weirder solutions to things than Riz or Fig. Sometimes he just says fuck you to whatever it is he’s supposed to do and just acts. He acts first and thinks second, and then he stews in regret for the next ten years. 

When Gorgug kisses Ragh, it’s weird and it’s awkward. It takes a surge of movement that has both of them wondering if they’re about to trade blows again. It’s surprise on both sides. Disbelief. 

When Gorgug pulls away, he eyes Ragh, wary. His stomach drops - if he’d misread the situation, he has just gotten himself into a whole world of trouble. 

Instead, Ragh starts crying. 

Gorgug just looks at him. What does Ragh see right now? Pity? Indifference? Genuine care? Gorgug doesn’t even know how he feels himself, and he doesn’t trust himself to speak. 

He turns and walks away.

It’s only when he gets to the car that he remembers his drumsticks, hastily shoved in his back pocket when he’d seen Ragh coming. He reaches back and pulls them out. 

One of them is completely split in half, and the other one is intact for now but Gorgug doesn’t know if it’ll stay that way. They must have gotten broken during the fight. Well, shit. 

* * *

**Adaine**

Adaine would have been perfectly fine never speaking to her family ever again. It’s just that her mother calls her, and Adaine is an idiot and picks up instead of refusing the call. 

“What,” she barks into the phone. 

All her mother says is, “Adaine.” 

“What do you want.” 

Her mother asks her to come home. Her mother tells her she’ll stand up to her father, stop comparing her to Aelwyn. Adaine doesn’t believe her. 

What more is there to say? Adaine yells. 

“I don’t want you calling me again,” she says murderously. “I don’t trust you to follow through on that. You had fourteen - almost fifteen years to prove yourself to me, and you didn’t.” 

This weekend is Fig’s scheduled weekend with Gorthalax, so Adaine had had the bedroom to herself. Gilear is generally pretty quiet - he’s only really a nuisance when Adaine has to look at him. Or look in the fridge - seriously, does he consume anything other than yogurt? The bedroom window faces east, so Adaine hasn’t turned on the light yet, but it’s high approaching the time when she should. 

She and Fig share a small room that’s barely enough for two twin beds and two dressers with a rug in the middle. They barely have space to maneuver, and Fig had had to move some of her stuff out to the living room when Adaine had first moved in. But it feels more  _ hers _ than her bedroom at home ever had. 

“You didn’t just stand by, Mom. You joined in. You’ve always been just as bad as Dad and Aelwyn.”

“But I’m your mother!” 

And boy, does that fill Adaine with spite. 

“That doesn’t mean  _ shit _ ,” she screams into the phone. “Just because you  _ birthed _ me doesn’t mean you get to be awful to me for my whole life and then have the audacity to tell me to come home. If you really wanted me home so bad, you should have thought of that years ago!” 

Here’s the thing. Adaine knows she needs to be resting her voice. They’ve been rehearsing nonstop, and also she had an oral presentation on Friday for history, and also when she’s around her friends they just do a lot of talking because that’s who they are. 

But blowing up at her mother is so gratifying in the moment that Adaine forgets to care. 

She regrets this, of course, when she hangs up the phone and realizes,  _ oh _ . Her throat feels raw. 

Adaine, tentatively, tries to sing a line of their first song. It comes out in a whisper. 

* * *

**Kristen**

She’s supposed to leave in an hour, and she’s sitting in her bed on her phone when her mother slams the door open. 

“Hey, Mom,” Kristen says, not looking up. “What’s up?” 

“Kristen,” says her mother, and then Kristen  _ has _ to look up, because oh shit. Her mom sounds serious. “What is this I hear about you going to the park the other day. With a girl.” 

Oh,  _ shit _ . 

“I tried to excuse the - the questioning,” her mother tells her, picking up Kristen’s world religions book gingerly, with two fingers, and tossing it to the floor. “I tried to believe you would just grow out of it. I tried to believe that that school wouldn’t  _ corrupt _ you-”

“Mom!” 

Kristen’s heart is pounding and she can hear the blood rushing in her ears. This is bad. This is bad, bad, bad. 

“But then,” her mother continues, “then I had to hear from one of the other ladies on the flower guild about you, in the park, with a girl.” 

She can salvage this. She can. “Mom, it’s not what you think.” 

“Really, Kristen?” asks her mother. “Because I trust Wendy not to lie to me, and I don’t trust you. You think we haven’t noticed you sneaking out? Writing that music? Questioning Helio, straying from his word?”

“I can explain -”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Her mom waves her hand as though she could just wave Kristen herself aside. “Don’t you get all smart with me.” She walks further into Kristen’s room, knocking a stack of schoolwork off her desk as she goes. “You’ve strayed too far from the church. From now on, you come straight home. None of this sneaking out stuff. We’ll be checking. Your father is working right now, but he is equally disappointed in you.” 

She can come straight home after school. That’s fine. The Bad Kids don’t have anything planned after the Battle of the Bands, and her friends will understand if she can’t hang out anymore. Her brain, though, is running a million miles a minute - if her mom knows about Tracker, knows what Kristen thinks she knows but hopes she doesn’t, there’s got to be more to this punishment than that. 

Her mom keeps going. She’ll go to Harvest Camp early this year, attend all the sessions rather than just one. Fine. Kristen can deal. She’ll be pulling her out of Aguefort and sending her to private school in the fall - fine. At least they’re letting Kristen finish out the school year. 

“We’re going to fix this, honey,” she tells Kristen. “You’re gonna get better.” 

Kristen does not want to get better. But it’s fine. She can fake it. She’ll get through it. 

Except then her mom grabs her guitar from next to her bed. “And no more of this. I’ve seen you take it out of the house with you. It’s trouble.” 

No.  _ No _ . 

That’s when Kristen breaks. Her breathing speeds up and she has to close her eyes tight to keep from crying. She can deal with all of this if she can just have today. Today is supposed to be good, odds are people think they’ll win Battle of the Bands, she needs today, she can’t -  _ no _ . 

“Mom, please -” 

She takes Kristen’s phone, too. 

But Kristen only gives herself a minute to really freak out. She’s going to the performance today. So as soon as her mom slams her door shut, she changes into her nice clothes, and she gets her bedroom window open. 

Kristen has a second floor bedroom, but the porch roof is right in front of her. She climbs out. It’s not hard, from there, to drop to the railing, holding onto the gutters for balance. Kristen isn’t the most acrobatic person ever, but she cannot afford to land wrong and break something, not today. 

She’s gotta be as quick as possible, if she’s gonna walk to the Black Pit in time. 

* * *

**Fig**

Kristen shows up without her guitar. 

Kristen shows up without her guitar, and Fabian has a bandaged hand.

Kristen shows up without her guitar, Fabian has a bandaged hand, and Adaine can barely whisper a hello. 

Kristen shows up without her guitar, Fabian has a bandaged hand, Adaine can barely whisper a hello, and Riz looks dead on his feet. 

Kristen shows up without her guitar, Fabian has a bandaged hand, Adaine can barely whisper a hello, Riz looks dead on his feet, and Gorgug shows her a broken drumstick instead of greeting her. 

Fig Faeth (not just-Fig anymore) is not having a good day. Today is the day of the Battle of the Bands. She’d barely slept last night, she was so excited. And now? Not so much. 

Her day had started with an argument with Gorthalax. He wanted her to try apologizing to her mom again, and Fig refused to. But then she’d had to go back to her mom’s house to pick up some makeup anyway and she’d run into her, and then it had devolved into a screaming match that had ended in Fig breaking down crying. She thinks maybe she’s finally made peace with her mom, she might even move back in there (with Adaine, who deserves better than Gilear’s apartment), but she is emotionally exhausted. She, frankly, doesn’t have the patience for one more disaster, let alone five. 

They’re set up in a storage room of the club. It’s barely enough room for the six of them. When Adaine shows up, Fig needs to sit down on a stray storage bin. By the time Gorgug arrives, she’s near tears. 

Usually, Fig would be the one to take charge in this situation. She’d start giving orders and telling everyone where to go. But she can’t, now. She feels helpless and adrift. They’re all just standing around, looking at each other. Everyone is visibly stressed. Gorgug’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, Adaine’s biting her lip so hard Fig worried she’s going to cut herself open, Kristen’s just staring off into the distance, unfocused. 

She does not know what to do.

It’s Fabian who steps up. Probably unsurprising, but she’s surprised nonetheless because she’d half-expected everyone to just stay stuck there. He coaxes some duct tape out of Adaine’s jacket pockets for the drumsticks, sends Kristen down the hall to ask the other bands if she might be able to borrow a guitar, and then walks up to Fig. 

“Hey,” he says softly. 

She looks up at him, fiercely blinking the tears out of her eyes. 

“D’you think you’d be able to sing?” Fabian asks. “‘Cause Adaine… well, she’s lost her voice, and I know you can sing. It might be a weird range for you, but…” 

Fig sighs heavily. “Yeah,” she answers. Her voice breaks, which maybe isn’t reassuring, but she can talk on a pitch so she’s at least better off than Adaine. 

“Listen,” he reassures her, “we’re gonna get this figured out. Promise.” 

Fabian sweeps her into a hug. 

They’ve been a lot more tactile, since the night Adaine left her parents’ house and they all snuck out and went to Fabian’s. They’d always been comfortable with each other, but lately everyone has been more intentional about saying they appreciate everyone and hugging instead of just sprawling all over each other. Over the past weeks, Fig has learned that Fabian is really good at hugging. He doesn’t look it - he’s a pretty wiry dude - but he’s tall and he’s got strong arms, and it just feels nice. Kristen and Adaine aren’t sure if Fabian’s better at it than Gorgug, but Riz is firmly on Fig’s side: Fabian Seacaster is a good person to hug. 

She stays wrapped in his arms for a long, long moment. He’s warm, and even though she can feel the gauze on one of his hands pressing into her back she feels comforted, if only for a second. Fig sobs into him, just once, and then takes a deep breath, and he lets go. 

“We can’t figure out  _ all _ of it,” she points out to him, gesturing to his hand and then tilting her head towards Riz (and, by extension, Gorgug, who’s basically holding Riz up at this point). “How are we supposed to - how - ugh.” 

“We can pull this together,” he promises. “It will be okay.” 

Fig is shocked to hear this coming from Fabian, who usually likes to complain. But with her and Riz, the two main decision makers of the group, somewhat out of commission, she appreciates his change in tune. 

That’s when Kristen slams the door to their little closet open. “No guitars,” she informs them. “I might go down the other end of the hallway, but. Is this even worth it?” 

Fig nearly bursts into tears again. 

It  _ has _ to be worth it. Fig has had so many out-there ideas over the years, and this is the only one that’s ever really stuck. It’s the longest project she’s ever carried through - it can’t end here just because of some bad luck. It  _ can’t _ end here. 

Kristen speaks up again. “Sorry,” she says, “that was stupid. Of course this is worth it. 

“Look, I know we’ve all had a shitty day. I can just… you know. I can just tell. So I guess I’m being a little pessimistic. Of course this is worth it. We have to go out there and perform because… it’s what we do. We’re friends. And we still have a message to send, no matter how well we can play.

“I don’t know what’s going on with the rest of you, but, like - my parents  _ know _ . About me and Tracker. And, I’ll be honest, I feel like hot shit right now. They took my guitar. I had to sneak out. Who knows what’s going to happen when this is over. But that’s why we have to go out and just… make the best of this. We don’t know what’s going to happen after. But we have something to say to the world that’s screwed all of us over like this today, and we’re gonna go out and say it.

“So I’m gonna go into the hallway and keep looking for a guitar. Gorgug’s gonna tape up his drumsticks, and Fig’s gonna sing, and… it’s just gonna have to happen like this. We’ll be fine.” 

Fig forces herself to keep thinking it, even as Kristen comes back sans guitar, even as Adaine has a panic attack and chooses to not go onstage with the rest of them, even as they’re walking up to the stage, incomplete. Even as it feels like a lie.

They’ll be fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, about the last chapter... i have theoretically finished it. i'm not 100% sure i'm happy with it, but i think it does what it needs to, so barring me deciding i want to rewrite it entirely i am going to try to have it posted on wednesday? 
> 
> up next: the second lemonade mouth miracle.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when the light gets into your heart, baby, don't you forget about me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. uh. here we are, everyone. thirteen chapters, 96 pages in google docs, and just about 40k later. 
> 
> i'll be honest, i'm still not at all satisfied with the way this came out, but it does what it needs to do so i'm just gonna post it. 
> 
> lyric for this chapter is from [don't you (forget about me)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A) by simple minds.

**Zelda**

Her heart sinks the moment the Bad Kids walk onstage, because there’s only four of them, and they look beat to hell. Adaine and Kristen aren’t there, Fig approaches the mic looking terrified - an expression Zelda has not seen on Fig Faeth before, mind - Gorgug’s drumsticks are broken and she can see the tape holding them together from where she sits halfway back from the stage, Riz looks like he can barely keep himself upright, and Fabian’s right hand is bandaged. 

What  _ happened _ to them? 

The announcer, who Zelda thinks might actually be the guidance counselor from school, looks at them apprehensively, but introduces them anyway. 

Zelda feels  _ awful _ for them. She knows - Gorgug’s told her - just how much they were counting on today, to measure up to all the hype, to prove to people like Goldenhoard that they really are something. That today was a huge step for Gorgug and Adaine, who are still unused to the spotlight and never really wanted it anyway. Zelda relates to that. She cannot imagine being in a band and performing in front of other people. It’s why she’s never fit in with her own family. She hates standing out. 

The four of them look at each other. She sees the moment they sigh and turn to their instruments, committing to trying to see this through even though they know how it’ll go. The Bad Kids begin their set. 

It goes… well, it goes for just a few seconds, really. The four of them try to play, but Fabian’s slow playing with just the one hand, Fig’s heart isn’t in it, and one of Gorgug’s drumsticks breaks as the duct tape fails. Riz doesn’t seem to have enough breath in him to play his instrument at all. One by one, they stop playing. Gorgug is the first to stand and just head back offstage. 

The announcer doesn’t seem to know what to do. Neither does the audience. Zelda sure has no idea how to react, but she wants to cry. They just look so defeated. 

The thing about the Bad Kids, to Zelda, is this. She has never been confident about anything. She tries to just blend into the background, avoid the worst of things, and get by that way. She didn’t really have a whole lot of friends, and that was fine. 

But then this band… this band showed up and made a point of bringing people together. At Ice Ball, Zelda was standing next to this cool senior named Penny who’d grabbed her hand when the lights went out. They’d run out of the gym together, and then they just got to talking. And now they’re friends, and if it hadn’t been for the Bad Kids and that crazy experience Zelda wouldn’t have that. And then, of course, there’s Gorgug. He’s just as awkward as Zelda is, and in a way that makes her feel better about herself. She’s so proud of him for finding the confidence to get up and do something like this. And he’s so similar to Zelda that, if he can do this, maybe Zelda can also find it in her to do something crazy. 

An idea sparks in her mind. 

She’s afraid. If she goes through with this and something goes wrong she’ll never live it down. But she has to do  _ something _ , because the Bad Kids ending with just walking offstage ashamed is not what they deserve. 

She has to do  _ something _ . 

* * *

**Gorbag**

The two other members of that band hang around backstage, peering out through the stage left door. They get a perfect view of the catastrophe. Gorbag almost feels worse for them than he does for the kids onstage, mostly because the blonde girl is so clearly trying to hold back tears at the sight. 

Shit, like, this band is  _ young _ . He knew they were high schoolers, but it hasn’t clicked until now that they’re freshmen. The same age his own kid would be. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Probably Roz, in the audience. He ignores it - and his other band members, who are hissing at him to come back to their “green room” - in favor of watching the four kids who’d managed to play step away from their instruments and walk offstage, heads hanging low. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. 

Gorbag’s heart stops when he hears the small, timid voice coming from the audience. Well, at first he’s not really sure what it is that he’s hearing - he’s behind the curtain, after all, and there’s a lot of ambient noise in the Black Pit. But once he realizes, yeah, his heart stops. 

He’s pretty sure the high school band has the same reaction. The four of them that had been walking offstage stop in their tracks. The exhausted-looking short one is the first to turn, slowly, back around to see whatever it is that has just happened. 

Gorbag shifts his footing, trying to see through a crack in the wall to figure out what exactly is going on. 

It’s a tiny satyr girl, standing on a folding chair, eyes shut tight,  _ singing _ . 

That’s when Gorbag recognizes the song. 

He doesn’t usually listen to pop music. The radio stations on his car presets skew a little more classic rock, and Roz is partial to 70s music, despite it having been not quite old enough to be cool back when they were growing up. But one night a few weeks back he hadn’t been able to sleep, and his usual station had been doing a themed night of something he wasn’t particularly fond of, so he’d skipped around until he’d found a song that sounded interesting. It had been by a local high school band, the radio announcer had said, and Gorbag hadn’t thought much of it. He’d kind of forgotten about it, actually. But he’d liked it. 

He’s only heard it the once, he’s pretty sure, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to sing along, to help the satyr girl in her brave endeavour, if he tried. But turns out he doesn’t need to try, because another voice from the audience joins in once the prechorus hits, and then another, and then another. 

The kids seem shocked. He can’t blame them, really. 

The redhead, the human girl, gets a light in her eyes and grabs the blonde’s hand, tugging her forwards to join their bandmates and then beyond, onto the stage. The blonde isn’t trying to hold back her tears anymore, she’s full-on crying now - god these kids are  _ young _ \- and she follows her friend, stumbling a little bit. The others follow. 

Once he figures that the kids are gonna be okay, that he doesn’t need to watch them like a hawk out of fear that he’ll need to be a functional adult presence, he tears himself away from the magic of the moment to check Roz’s texts as the audience sings on the other side of the wall. 

_ their drummer. he looks like you. _

* * *

**Sklonda**

Something swells in her heart. It feels like pride. 

Listen, Sklonda is always proud of Riz. Always. Even when she’s not home or dead tired from back-to-back shifts or even when he’s driving her up the wall because he never goes to sleep and forgets about his homework if she doesn’t tell him to do it five times over. Yes, even then, because  _ he is her son _ and she could never not be proud of him. 

This, though. 

When Sklonda had first heard about the band, she’d thought something like  _ hmm, that’s nice _ and then turned to a fifty-page reading on the history of constitutional originalism. Then, as the six kids had grown closer and sometimes she’d come home to find two or three or all of them sprawled across her floor, she had been proud of Riz mostly for finding friends that genuinely seemed like great kids. She’d heard that one song of theirs on the radio from time to time - late-night radio stations were her best friend nowadays, it seemed - and it was good, it worked together, it fit, and she was proud of them all. But never in a million years had she thought she’d see  _ this _ , her son and his friends standing on a stage, still strong and tall despite this devastating failure (or is it one?), facing a crowd of fans and hearing them sing back. Singing that they mean something, and that they should not be ashamed. 

* * *

**Fig**

She did it. She’s done it. She’s made something real and lasting, she started a project and she followed through. And that’s only part of what Fig Faeth (yes, Faeth) is feeling right now. 

She had thought it was over. They all did, she knew that. The moment they walked into the dressing room Fig was sure that they were going to crash and burn and be the laughingstock of the school. And, well, crash and burn they did. But look at everyone out there. They’re  _ singing _ . 

Both her dads are in the audience. So is her mom. So is Riz’s mom and Gorgug’s parents and - now, Fig doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up but there’s someone standing near the back who looks a whole lot like Adaine and is maybe her sister. There are people out there singing - singing for her, singing for  _ them _ \- who are older. Juniors and seniors. Popular. And then some who aren’t, like Riz’s AV friends or someone who she thinks might be from the theatre department. And Gorgug’s girlfriend. 

Fig makes a note to buy Zelda Donovan some ice cream or something once this is over. 

But for now she is content to stand and watch, eyes hot with tears, as the crowd sings back to them. Lifts them up. 

They. Are. Something. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seriously, seriously seriously seriously, THANK YOU to everyone who has read this, anyone who's left a kudos, or commented, or bookmarked. multichaps are always a scary plunge into the unknown for me, especially so because when i posted chapter one i hadn't interacted with the dimension 20 fandom at all. i'm so so happy that people have enjoyed this - i've really enjoyed going on this journey with all of you. i always get so excited the couple days after i post to see what people think. this fandom has been so incredibly welcoming and i have seriously been spoiled by the amount of love given to this fic. 
> 
> ok, sappy stuff aside, i made [this really cool playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7boi1A73XjAwJmR0kB2N7g?si=Gl6x3qk0RFyhZkJK9UeXGg) for myself to listen to as i wrote this (this is also where i've been sourcing the chapter summaries!), so if you want a little look inside my head from while i was writing, there you go! the songs that are chapter titles are in order at the top, and everything after that is just vibes. 
> 
> you can also find me on tumblr ([deep-hearts-core](https://deep-hearts-core.tumblr.com/)). heads up i will be moving all the fics under the poisonivyschild pseud (so, this one, and my other d20 fic if you've read that) to my main pseud which is just inmylife. i'm working on cleaning up my ao3 account at the moment lol. so if anyone has, like, user-subbed to this pseud, go switch your sub to my main one because i'm not gonna be posting under this pseud anymore!
> 
> thanks again. so so much love and gratitude to you all.

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello i have lots of feelings about the bad kids and also lemonade mouth this fic is entirely me smashing the two canons together and that's fine! 
> 
> this is a new and fun experiment in "i wrote like half of this fic before i posted it" so, yknow. i'm gonna try and update once a week. but also i'm REALLY bad at finishing multichaps lol so this might die after chapter seven
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://deep-hearts-core.tumblr.com/)! come say hi if you want i'd love some friends in this fandom because i'm REALLY NEW to d20 fandom (as in, i've seen s1 of fantasy high and that's it)


End file.
